Even though Larry Snider (1955 BSIE) graduated from the UH Cullen College of Engineering more than 50 years ago, the struggles he and his wife, Gerri, overcame will be familiar to many of the college’s more-recent graduates. Larry worked 40 hours per week while taking a full slate of classes, and Gerri worked full time for the telephone company and managed the household. Together, they struggled and managed to scrape by, but just barely.

Other aspects of their story will be far less familiar, though, to the point that the life they’ve led would be hard for many people to imagine. Over the half century after his graduation, Larry’s career took the family around the world as his talents and drive led companies to recruit him from one new position to another. They moved a total of 35 times as Larry did everything from analyzing malfunctioning industrial furnaces in Houston to developing oil fields in Iran to leading a coal brokerage firm based in Cincinnati.

Now, the Sniders’ hard work has put them in an enviable position: They spend much of the year at their home on the banks of Lake Conroe while also traveling frequently, usually in the form of months-long cruises around the world.

Motivated by their faith and by a sense of gratitude toward the University of Houston, they also use their good fortune to help others through scholarships and gifts to the Cullen College. “The education the college gave me was what started me on my career. I feel that I owe back,” said Larry. “We want to help people so that they don’t have to do what we had to do.”

Working…

Larry Snider grew up in Oklahoma during the great depression, the son of a half-Cherokee father who, when it was available, found work as a pipe fitter. It was his father who instilled in Larry the work ethic that enabled him to hold a full-time job and still earn his B.S. in process engineering (a hybrid of chemical engineering and industrial engineering) from the Cullen College.

Larry weighed multiple job offers upon his graduation, ultimately settling on a position with Sheffield Steel that paid $405 per month—$5 more than the other offers he received. At Sheffield, he was tasked with finding the cause of malfunctions in the company’s large blast furnace. In order to see how they operated, he rode in a small car normally used to transport coal, ore and other ingredients to the furnace.

His stay with Sheffield was short, though. After three years, Larry took a post in Fontana, Calif., helping import an oxygen furnace for Kaiser Steel. Larry was needed in California immediately, leaving Gerri to manage a cross-country move with a young daughter. “I had to sell the house by myself—I had never done that before—and I had to hire the movers and handle that end, which I had never done either. I had to fly on an airplane to California, and I had never flown or left Texas before. It was quite an education,” she said.

After his stint with Kaiser Steel, Larry took a job with consulting firm Arthur Young. That position, in turn, quickly gave way to the Sniders’ biggest move: a post in Iran, helping the state-run oil company and the world’s largest refiners increase production and build a marine loading terminal.

Their time in Iran was difficult, the Sniders say. The language and cultural barriers left them somewhat isolated, and the extreme heat during the summers made a “normal” day almost impossible. After about two years they returned to the states for a new post for Larry at Booz Allen.

A few years, a few projects and a few moves later, Larry reached a career milestone, becoming, at the time, the youngest vice president in the history of Booz Allen (now Booz Allen Hamilton) at age 33 and opening the firm’s Dallas office.

While operating that office, Larry put his hybrid chemical engineering/industrial engineering degree to use in a consulting project for City Services Oil Company. As was common practice at the time, development geology, which focuses on drilling wells to expand production in new reservoirs, was placed under the company’s exploration geology budget. The consulting team saw that development geology was often neglected, however, because all funds had been spent on exploration geology, which is dedicated to finding new deposits.

“The consulting team came up with the idea to put development under the production budget. By doing that, development geology got high priority for funds, since production people were interested in retrieving more petroleum,” he stated. The plan was put into place by City Services and was hugely successful, and now practically all petroleum companies put development geology under their production operations.

In addition to fresh thinking, long hours and the hard work he put in, along the way Larry took a few unorthodox steps to get ahead. In one case, an individual working with Larry on a consulting project critiqued the apparent lack of industry veterans in an office he was managing.

“I was told ‘I don’t see any gray hair in your office. No matter how good a recommendation you come up with, no one will buy it because it’s coming from a bunch of whippersnappers.’ So I hired a few of the older guys from Booz Allen. I also tried to dye my hair gray. It didn’t work, but I tried!” said Larry.

And Giving…

The level of dedication and hard work the Sniders have exhibited has now put them in position to give generously to a number of organizations and causes. They are motivated to do so in large part by their strong Christian faith. “We feel that if God has blessed you with financial resources, you’re obligated to share with people who aren’t as blessed,” said Gerri. “The way we see it, our resources are ‘on loan’ from God, and He expects us to share them with others.”

Their first round of giving, therefore, goes to their home church, where they tithe, followed by donations to other churches led by ministers they know, and charities and organizations that serve others, especially UH.

The Sniders’ donations to the university are largely shaped by Larry’s life experiences. As a Native American, for instance, Larry says he felt he was at a disadvantage compared to many of his contemporaries. He and Gerri are now doing their part to help other Native Americans overcome the challenges they face by establishing an endowed scholarship for such students at the Cullen College. Similarly, they have established a scholarship for female students, with the hope of having more young women choose engineering as a profession.

The Sniders have also donated to general college funds, and have established charitable trusts and endowments that name the college as beneficiary. These gifts, Larry said, are intended to assist students and to help the university get the recognition it deserves.

“As a UH graduate, I guess I have a chip on my shoulder. The university provides an excellent education to dedicated, hard-working students. Still today it’s not getting its due as being a university with many research achievements, excellent faculty and quality graduates,” he said. “Every UH alum and student should work very hard to ensure the university gets the evaluation and ranking that it deserves.”