In Memoriam: Dr. William J. Snow —friend, scholar and historian— suffered a cerebral hemorrhage Tuesday evening, October 14, 1947, and died two days later. For over twenty years he had served faithfully as a member of the Board of Control of the Utah State Historical Society, and for eight of the Society's most difficult years, 1931-1938, he was its president. For thirty-eight years he served the faculty and students of the Brigham Young University, giving generously of his time and energy, stimulating hundreds to higher levels of objectivity, and yet withal inspiring a kindliness and respect for the dignity of man and his society. For a full lifetime of 78 years he served the cause of truth and tolerance among his fellowmen.

Dr. Snow was born in Lehi, Utah, April 16, 1869, to William Snow, a native of Vermont, and Sally Adams (Snow) of Stanstead, Lower Canada. His parents met and married at Nauvoo, Illinois from which they moved west as part of the sturdy pioneer migration that has founded and built Utah. William and Sally Adams Snow moved to Pine Valley, Utah, while their son William J. was less than a year old. For most of the next thirty years Dr. Snow lived in Pine Valley, though for a brief eight months, 1892-1893, he studied at the Brigham Young Academy. In spite of this all too brief opportunity as a scholar, Dr. Snow already exhibited a serious concern for, and talent in directing education. In his last uninterrupted years at Pine Valley, 1892-1898, Dr. Snow added to his chores as farmer and ranchman by teaching in the Pine Valley District Schools, serving as superintendent of the Washington County Schools, and managing the Pine Valley Co-op Store. On May 10, 1899, Dr. Snow married Hattie Thornton in the St. George Temple. Together they maintained throughout the years a most happy, industrious, contented home circle, and everyone who visited therein was impressed and inspired by the spirit of that nuclear Kingdom of Home.

The Snows had five children, William J. Jr., Ronald Thornton, Claude Shipley, Gordon Whittaker, and Emma Snow Pearson, four of whom were graduated from Brigham Young University, while William received his LL.B. from George Washington University. Claude, a teacher by profession, was killed in northern Italy March 28, 1945, during World War II.

Dr. Snow had already distinguished himself as a leader in Utah's Dixie when he was asked to serve as a missionary for the Latter-day Saints Church in New York and Brooklyn. Even so early as his return from his two-year mission, Dr. Snow had found his chief love in education, rather than in farming or merchandising, and he determined to prepare himself thoroughly. From the fall of 1903 when he, Mrs. Snow, and their small son left Dixie to attend the Brigham Young University, Dr. Snow was never done with his search for knowledge. The struggle incident to completing his formal training would have overwhelmed a lesser man, but he fought through to his B.A. in 1910, and then after studying at the University of Utah and the University of Chicago, he completed his work at the University of California, becoming a Master of Arts in 1922 and a Doctor of Philosophy in 1923. His research on the Great Basin before the coming of the Mormons was characteristically thorough, and his dissertation remains one of our best studies of early Utah. Much of its content was subsequently made available to the public as part of a series of articles on Utah published in the Utah Educational Review for 1926-1927.

In spite of these and other excellent products of his pen, Dr. Snow's greatest contribution was as a teacher and leader. His early interest in his church he maintained throughout his life, giving devoted service in ward and stake activities, and for many years, until his health forbade further activity a few years previous to his death, he served in the bishopric of Manavu Ward in Provo Stake. For many years he was chairman of the Library Committee and coach of the debating teams, at the Brigham Young University, but undoubtedly his influence was most widely felt as professor of history, for his impress was made there upon students not only from Provo but from the entire West. For those who wished to become historians he had at hand the techniques of the historical scholar—a keen appreciation of the problem of evidence, and an excellent humility which he was able to impart to his students. But more important than the techniques was an understanding. The business of the historian is to understand mankind. This is impossible except a researcher add to his diligence a sympathy and love for his fellows. Dr. Snow had this love and human understanding. Moreover, he was peculiarly gifted with the power to convey to his students not only the event, but its meaning; not only the act of man, but his motives: not only the weaknesses and strengths of governors and kings, but their importance as people: not only the struggles of men, but the dignity of man. The thousands who had some contact with him came away not only with a better acquaintance with past events, but also with a deeper respect for men who, apparently caught in a hopeless confusion, continued to struggle for a rational adjustment of the differences that thwart man in his relations with man. Through the most turbulent history his quiet, confident, informed mind was able to move with assurance, carrying with him a faith in the rationality of man and in his capacity for ultimate triumph. This conception of man's dignity and this faith in his ultimate triumph have been priceless for Dr. Snow's students, for to them the study of man and history was thereby endowed with significance.

Perhaps there is no better way to reflect the philosophy which dominated Dr. Snow in his approach to history than to let him speak for himself: In this complex and changing world—a world in which sacred traditions are being undermined, settled convictions disturbed, our free institutions and customary ways of doing things challenged—some system of thought must be found that will integrate our personality and synthesize and socialize our remarkable specialized achievements. We cannot go on thinking in the old patterns and adapt ourselves to the new situations. We cannot be happy in a society of maladjustments unless we can find an inward habitation in our souls for a faith that offers a measure of security and a basis for an assurance of a future goal of comparative harmony.

Both individually and socially, distraction, ineffectiveness, and inability to adjust to startling changes give rise to indifference as to our fate or to hopelessness and despair. Joy and sorrow, plenty and poverty, faith and doubt, are found side by side in this wonderful age of ours—an age in which science and invention have ministered to man's welfare and material comfort in thousands of ways. "Science," as one enthusiast declared, "has enabled man to travel fifty times as fast, accomplish a hundred times as much work in a day, lift a weight a thousand times as heavy, and make his voice heard a thousand times as far."

And yet science cannot unify or integrate the whole of life, cannot satisfy the inner yearnings of the soul, cannot explain man's peculiar attributes.

While patiently seeking integration in the personalities of his students, he was unwilling to support an easy way to composure. There was no true peace of mind and heart except as a reward for an unsparing examination of life and society. Peace was born of knowledge, not ignorance, and institutionalized democracy and religion must be personalized for each individual or be meaningless. From this postulate stemmed his conviction about the role of a university: Formulas, policies, institutions arise through a felt need, and disappear or should be displaced when they cease to function under changed conditions. Vestigial survivals should be shuffled off. The university in which we serve is an open forum for the truth from any and all sources. But truth is freedom, freedom to investigate, to analyze, to draw conclusions from all available evidence and not from prejudice or pre-conceived notions. Those who need to be sheltered from dangerous or sectarian doctrines may not be worth saving. Security lies in fearlessly probing for truth no matter how deep it lies or where it may strike. In a university, truth is synonomous with liberty, and liberty is the unhampered quest for truth.

On the occasion of Dr. Snow's death, his close friend, Dr. P. A. Christensen, beautifully characterized him: He was a Christian thinker. By that I mean that when he thought about economic and social and political problems, he thought as a Christian would think. He saw in all human beings something precious, some potential goodness or beauty which he must respect, and, if possible, help to develop. His heart went out spontaneously to the unfortunate and the underprivileged. He could not be at ease in a world in which countless millions are denied ordinary decencies and opportunities. There could be no good society in which the best fruits of the human mind and spirit were not a common possession. In his scheme of values humanity alone was sacred. Economic systems and political institutions had value only as means, only as they served the common good.

He was a lover of truth. And real lovers of truth are rare indeed. Most of us say we love the truth, but what we really love, I fear, is our own agreeable conception of what the truth is. The basic assumption of the mental and spiritual life of William J. Snow was that the truth is always good, and that men should try to find it and to live by it. As a student of history, he knew that most of the misery that afflicts human society is born of ignorance, superstition, and prejudice; that the source of the most devastating evil in the world is the loyalty of human beings to error which they regard as truth, to wrong which they believe to be right.

This kind of teaching is rare and important. When great ideas are married to honor and humility, true greatness is possible. Dr. Snow left no great monument behind except in the memory of his friends and students. His career and his wealth were never spectacular. If we have been concerned here with his philosophy, it is because it is the product of his great and understanding mind. It is the most appropriate monument we know by which to remember our colleague and friend to whose wisdom and sanity we wish to cling even after he himself is gone.

When these things have been said for Dr. Snow's character and personality, something yet remains to be said, very personal for the Utah State Historical Society. The Society's Board of Control is deeply aware of his contribution to the development in Utah of new standards of historical objectivity as reflected in his years of labor in the interests of the Society; the place of its beloved former president will not easily be filled, nor will his memory soon fade.

O. Meredith Wilson,
Dean of the University College,
University of Utah.