March 6, 2014: The Harold Alfond Foundation announces that all Maine resident babies automatically will be awarded a $500 college grant.

The Portland-based foundation, which its namesake established in 1950, supports health care, education, youth development and other causes in Maine. By 2003 it had donated more than $100 million to charity.

Alfond (1914-2007), a Massachusetts native and high school graduate who moved to Maine in 1934 to take a shoe factory job at the lowest rung of the corporate ladder, worked his way up to factory superintendent. In 1940 he and his father founded a shoe manufacturing company in Norridgewock, which they soon sold, but Alfond stayed on as president for 25 years. He founded the Dexter Shoe Co. in 1956.

He sold the company and its affiliates in 1993 for $433 million to Berkshire Hathaway.

Joseph Owen is a retired copy desk chief of the Morning Sentinel and Kennebec Journal and board member of the Kennebec Historical Society. He can be contacted at: jowen@mainetoday.com.