The life story of Charles Snoek ’55 is one of hard work, true love, exotic travels and . . . pure luck. Snoek, a Port Arthur native, began his collegiate studies in graphic design and ended them shaking hands with serendipity to begin a career that would take him all over the world.
The path to that future began early. After losing his father when he was 5, Snoek, his mother and his seven siblings were left financially strapped, so he began working at Henke-Pillot (now Kroger) in Port Arthur at age 11. High school graduation coincided with a promotion to manager, and that’s about the time fate stepped in.
A truck driver for a national-brand distributor for the store impressed Snoek with his courteousness and helpfulness. “I asked one day if any of the stores he called on ever ran his merchandise on sale,” said Snoek. “He answered, ‘never,’ and a deal was struck. I agreed that if his company would keep trucks backed up to the store so we would not run out, I would run all of his products at 10 percent over cost along with other store specials.”
After sales skyrocketed, Snoek says, a man in cowboy boots and a Stetson walked into the store and asked for the manager.
“His name was C.C. Kelley, the truck driver’s employer and a prominent rancher in the Beaumont area,” said Snoek. “He held up the two-page ad with all of his products listed and asked who put it together. I told him I did. He asked if I had any formal art schooling, and when I said ‘no,’ he told me if I wanted to go to college, he would send me.”
The next week, Kelley fell off of a horse and broke his back, but did sign a blank check and send it to Snoek via the truck driver. With check in hand, Snoek and his family decided that Kelley shouldn’t pay for all of the schooling, so he made out the check for a mere $288 and started his formal art training at North Texas State Teachers College in Denton. After a
year at North Texas, Snoek transferred into commercial art at Lamar, working nights in the refining and cracking units of Gulf Oil to make it through.
After graduation, Snoek went to work for Lamb Printing Co. and was soon working with David Bost, then head of the journalism program at Lamar, on a brochure about the university. When he called on Bost one morning about the project, Bost noticed he was wearing a suit and tie and asked if he would sit in on an interview with a representative from a pharmaceutical company who was at the school to canvass pre-med students. Bost told Snoek they
did not have enough students who wanted to interview, and he was afraid the representative wouldn’t come back the next year.
“I agreed and went to the interview, when, as fate would have it, I noticed a man having trouble getting a bag out of his car,” said Snoek. “I asked him to back away and let me get the bag out, and he told me he was from the Upjohn Pharmaceutical Co. there to interview medical students. I told him I was probably his first interview.”
After talking for more than an hour about the company, Snoek finally confessed he was a commercial art and engineering major, not pre-med. “He immediately asked if I wanted to go to work for Upjohn.”
During the next 36 years, Snoek and his wife, Lunella, who were sweethearts while at Lamar and have now been married 54 years, lived in Temple and Baytown; Kalamazoo, Mich.; Los Angeles; Connecticut; and Japan. A sales leader in 1963, he rose quickly within the company and was soon working
in the pharmaceutical division where he was in charge of corporate advertising for several products, including Panalba and Orinase.
In 1964, Upjohn placed him in charge of product planning and promotion for five groups of the chemical division from California and Michigan to Houston and Connecticut. His marketing decisions increased sales from less then $2.5
million to more than $50 million in six years. By 1971, he was managing director of Kasei Upjohn Co. in Japan, a joint venture between Upjohn and Mitsubishi Chemical Industries. When the venture concluded, he was back in the corporate office with responsibility for all public relations and advertising for the chemical division, managing two advertising agencies and three public relations consultant agencies to handle communications for the division worldwide. Trips to Holland and Portugal were frequent.
In 1983, Snoek and his wife, Lunella, relocated to Tokyo when he was appointed director of corporate public relations for the Asia/Pacific area. There, he developed a network to provide immediate communication ability for the area. While there, he also served on the Japanese Foreign Trade group’s advisory board and worked with Japan to construct a multi-million
dollar research laboratory.
During six years in Japan, Snoek worked with the Indonesian government, which used the Upjohn contraceptive Depo Provera to establish zero population growth, or a stable population in which births and immigration equal the sum of deaths and emigration. He also worked with the Australian Veterinarian Society, which used an Upjohn antibiotic product to save Koala bears that were suffering from a devastating epidemic.
He is now in Spring Hill, Tenn., where he and Lunella are living the life they always wanted. They are parents to three, which include a set of twins, and grandparents to six. But it wasn’t until Snoek’s retirement from Upjohn in 1989 that he finally pursued his lifelong interest in painting, creating brilliantly colored images of everything from aquatic life to surrealistic hands. Being raised in Port Arthur with a love for fishing contributes to his fascination with his subject matter. “I have fished all over the world,” he said.
The aquarium at Moody Gardens in Galveston stocks Snoek’s collection of note cards, titled “Under The Sea.” Lunella creates backgrounds for his paintings and chose to take up the hobby because spending time together is a top priority for the couple.
“My favorite thing to paint is probably the thought or the opportunity of the moment,” he said. “But, if I had to pick a favorite subject, it would probably be the tall birds, the herons and egrets.” Some of Snoek’s pieces from his butterfly collection are hung in the East Texas Art League gallery in Jasper.
Snoek is working on an acrylic of a speckled trout for his cardiologist, a turkey with spread wings for a local bank president and a set of surrealistic playing cards.
If he and Lunella aren’t found in their painting studio, they can be tracked to an exotic fishing locale, and, if not there, then certainly on the links. For the pair, right now is the right time and wherever both are together is the right place.
