In the Museum: The Papers of Crocker Snow
- By Mary Collins
- Air & Space magazine, September 2002
"CROCKER SNOW, NOW THAT'S A BOSTON NAME," says Mark Kahn, a former Bostonian himself and currently an archivist at the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum. “I remember hearing about the battles over [the expansion of] Logan Airport in the 1970s. I was in high school at the time, and he was in the news.” Kahn fingers the rough list the Museum has created of the contents of the Crocker Snow collection, which it acquired last summer.
Though Snow is not widely known in aviation beyond his native New England, his papers captivated NASM acquisitions archivist Patti Williams because the regional disputes Kahn remembers had national implications. “Crocker Snow was head of aviation in Massachusetts, and Massachusetts was one of the first [states] in the U.S. to have a major aviation bureau,” says Williams. “He was deeply involved in how to manage a major urban airport,” starting as early as 1939, when he became head of the state aeronautics commission. (Prior to 1939, the Motor Vehicles Department was in charge of all aviation-related issues and regulations.)
Williams recalls the fall day in 2001 when Snow’s son, Crocker Snow Jr., walked into the lobby of the Museum unannounced, with a copy of his father’s biography, Log Book: A Pilot’s Life. His father had died in 1999. Did the Smithsonian want his personal papers?
“Because I’m a staff of one, the families almost always have to contact me first,” says Williams. “We only take about 40 percent of what we’re offered. We have set acquisitions criteria. First, the papers must be of national, not just regional, importance.”
She agreed to look at the collection.
Six months later, Williams flew to Ipswich, Massachusetts, to check out the various files, audio tapes, videotapes, photographs, and more stashed in the damp basement of Crocker Snow Sr.’s home. She spent the day sifting through the mementos and papers of a man whose life spanned the first century of aviation.
Born in Boston in 1906, Snow took his first flight with his older brother, Kick, in 1922, back in the days when airplanes braked by dragging their tail skids. He toyed with Harvard Law School for a year, but couldn’t resist the allure of the airfield and the example of his charming brother, a former World War I pilot. Even after his brother died in 1923 while landing an airplane at the new Logan Airport, Snow remained convinced that aviation was his calling.
In 1928 he joined up with two well-off friends, Ted Kenyon and Andy Ivanoff, to form Skyways, one of the first commercial flying operations at Logan. By the start of World War II, Snow had established himself as one of the most experienced and knowledgeable aviation figures on the East Coast.
During the war, the scope of his career expanded beyond New England. The U.S. Army Air Forces asked him to plot a northern polar path to Europe to be used in the event that Germany occupied the British Isles. He eventually established a variety of supply routes and oversaw the construction of bases and airstrips in places like Reykjavik, Iceland. He even saw action in the Pacific as commander of the first B-29s to bomb Tokyo.
Comments (2)
I grew up on his estate since I was 8 yrs old I was the grandson he never had as he put it I worked there until I was 30 I did all of his research work in his 100 ft long cellar with wall cabinets I helped him along with pam and ann seymour to finding his orville wright flying license in the cellar along with alot of b-29 noseart from his papers warning people with dollar bills on one side so they would pick them up to get out of hiroshima Isaw and catalogued all of these pics and i have to say his son crocker jr was his least best friend which im sure anyone that knows himknows thati was kind of shocked but he probably has a monetary issue or to try himself look better you can ask his stepbrother don little in ipswich it is to bad that
Posted by chris austin on February 25,2009 | 10:18 PM
My mother, Margaret 'Peggy' (Reid) Towne just passed away. She worked for Crocker Snow at the Mass. Aeronautic Commission at Logan Airport. Peggy followed his career throughout her life. She tells one story of another secretary asking about Peggy's veins showing on her wrists (she was in her 20's at the time). She answered "Oh, I'm just an old blueblood like Crocker". At that moment, Mr. Snow happened to be walking up the isle from behind her. He didn't say anything, but I guess his shoulders were 'going' as he chuckled his way back to his office. EDITORS' REPLY: Our condolences on the loss of your mother. Thanks for sharing such a wonderful anecdote.
Posted by Richard Towne on January 8,2011 | 06:26 AM