The Exeter Bulletin offers a thoughtful tribute to Doug Snow, longtime manager of the Exeter Bookstore at Phillips Exeter Academy, Exeter, N.H., who died earlier this year.
Under Snow's management, the Bulletin wrote, "the Exeter Bookstore became a friendly gathering place, not only for those buying books and supplies, but also for a number of lost souls, unhappy in the dormitory or in class or in sports, who found a warm smile and a pleasant word at the bookstore and came back for more. Doug ran an excellent bookstore, teaching his assistants to work independently, and always making himself available to them and the customers. His influence extended beyond Exeter. He was instrumental in founding the College Stores of New England and became its third president."
Jake Elwell of Harold Ober Associates noted to us that Exeter Bookstore is "where young John Irving, David Payne, Dan Brown and Chang-rae Lee and many, many other future writers would have purchased their textbooks. Likely their outside reading too, as the inventory, if small, was excellent. When I was at PEA in the early '80s, Tom Wolfe, Douglas Adams and John Kennedy Toole were in vogue--and Mr. Snow's shelves always had plenty of copies--along with campus pleasure reading mainstays like Salinger, Hemingway and John Knowles."