From the Tuscon Citizen May 19, 2006

Craig Bradford Snow, a founder and longtime executive director of the Tucson AIDS Project, died at home Wednesday of cancer at age 59. He had been ill for about a year.

Mr. Snow’s remains were cremated and there will be no religious service, according to Artie Stone, his life partner and business partner.

The couple operated Craig Snow and Associates, a consulting firm.

Stone said a memorial service is being planned for the end of June at the Temple of Music and Art. Details will be announced after the date is set.

“He was a passionate, patient pioneer who thought leap years ahead of what needed to be done,” Stone said. “He was a master of design who envisioned all factions working together for a common good. He never met a stranger and never forgot a name.

“He was a good friend to many and a special friend to his chosen family,” Stone said Thursday.

Mr. Snow came to Tucson in 1977 from Cleveland to work as a lecturer in the department of English at the University of Arizona. He left UA in 1984 as acting director of the UA Composition Board to start organizing the Tucson AIDS Project.

Stone said that in the mid-1980s Mr. Snow became concerned about the emerging AIDS crisis. A close friend had died of AIDS and his “itchy social conscience” made him realize “there was more to the world than correcting grammar errors.”

Mr. Snow and others teamed up in 1985 to found the Tucson AIDS Project and he served as executive director for 12 years.

In 1988, he was appointed to the governor’s statewide task force charged with developing a plan for dealing with the spread of AIDS in Arizona. That same year he was named citizen of the year by the Arizona chapter of the National Association of Social Workers, which recognized his HIV/AIDS advocacy work.

Mr. Snow left full-time HIV/AIDS work in 1997 after the merger of TAP, the Shanti Foundation and the People With AIDS Coalition of Tucson.

The new Southern Arizona AIDS Foundation has grown from a budget of $1.8 million in 1997 to $4.6 million this year.

Anne Maley was director of Shanti before the merger, then became co-executive director of SAAF with Mr. Snow.

Maley said she is saddened that with Mr. Snow’s passing, two of the three founders of the groups that became SAAF are gone.

“There’s a gap in my heart for these two men, my friends who I worked very closely with,” she said. “I’m carrying the torch for them. The three of us as a team worked to make SAAF what is is today. Craig’s legacy lives on.”

Jerome Beillard, executive director of the People With AIDS Coalition, died of AIDS in 1995, Maley said.

Kent Burbank, executive director of Wingspan, a nonprofit gay and lesbian advocacy group, met Mr. Snow when he moved to Tucson six years ago.

“He was passionate about causes close to his heart … and to his work to make the nonprofit sector here more professional, more vibrant,” Burbank said.

He said Mr. Snow worked with the Community Foundation for Southern Arizona to start a fund to support Wingspan and to build support for projects of Borderlands Theater. He also helped Wingspan write its bylaws and recast its mission statement and values. Mr. Snow also worked as a consultant to Child and Family Resources.

Christina Rossetti, a former co-worker of Mr. Snow’s, worked with him as program director of the Tucson AIDS Project from 1989 to 1995.

“People who worked for him wanted to work as hard as he did and be as committed as he was,” she said. “Only a few people made a professional commitment over a long period of time the way he did,” she said.

Mr. Snow never forgot a birthday or anniversary and was a great friend and “wonderful storyteller,” Rossetti said.

In 1998, Mr. Snow developed a program called Job Express, a welfare-to-work program that paid for bus fare.

In 2002, as a consultant to Pima County, he developed a funding strategy for Brewster Center Domestic Violence Services when funding cuts threatened the agency’s future.

Mr. Snow was a graduate of Miami University in Oxford, Ohio. He was preceded in death by his father, Bradford, and is survived by his mother, Helen Snow, of Ocala, Fla.; two sisters; a brother; and three nieces.