Dean Snell was an active golfer, family man and 34-year employee at Bath Iron Works when he was diagnosed with esophageal cancer. He fought it courageously, then it came back like a beast, his widow Sharon Snell said Aug. 28 in the Wiscasset kitchen of niece Julie Jones.

Hours after her husband’s death in 2009, Sharon Snell asked his doctor at New England Cancer Specialists in Brunswick about starting a memorial fund. The next day, she and the couple’s children talked further. The family  decided to start a foundation in Dean Snell’s name, to help cancer patients afford treatment and weather other financial hardships the disease can create.

To date, the all-volunteer Dean Snell Cancer Foundation has given out more than $240,000 to meet expenses that have included taxi rides to treatment sessions; insurance premiums and co-payments; and household costs such as heating oil or a supermarket gift card so that a patient doesn’t have to choose between meeting their family’s needs and their own medical ones.

“It can be all those things that you wouldn’t ordinarily think of,” that become needs due to medical bills and lost work, board member Mary Nickerson said. Nickerson is Jones’ mother and the Snells’ sister-in-law.

“Unfortunately, we can’t do anything about the disease, but we can be that vehicle that provides that relief when you need it,” Snell said. “We just hope that we can be lightening the burden to help them with the treatment.”

The foundation doesn’t get the patients’ names; it works with a patient advocate at the center in Brunswick to help patients based on need. Last year, patients from 29 communities including Wiscasset, Boothbay, Edgecomb, Damariscotta, South Bristol and Waldoboro received help, Snell said.

For the last four years, grants the foundation has received from the Maine Cancer Foundation have been a huge help with patients’ transportation needs, Snell said.

Recalling the loss of her husband, Snell at times spoke with difficulty.

“My husband Dean was a fighter. He fought with courage and determination. We just want to honor that courage and positive thinking,” she said.

He would be proud, but very humbled by the foundation and the help it has given patients, she added later.

“He never would have ever imagined it.”

The foundation’s annual fundraisers include a formal gala and silent auction planned for Nov. 7 this year at The Brunswick Hotel & Tavern and a golf event Oct. 3 at Brunswick Golf Course. Dean Snell played golf with his sons on weekends and would walk the course when he played golf during the time he was having chemotherapy and radiation treatment, she said.

A new annual volleyball fundraiser for the foundation is set for 8 a.m. Sept. 19 on the Olympic-sized beach volleyball court in the Jones family’s yard. The round-robin, double-elimination format is expected to take until early evening to complete, Jones said.

A four-person team costs $40. A donation gets admission to be a spectator and a chance at a door prize, Jones said. 

Aleeya Jones, daughter of Jones and husband and Hodgdon Yachts (East Boothbay) employee Chad Jones, is an accomplished youth volleyball player. She plans to play in the tournament, her mother said. The teen has experience in fundraising. In Phippsburg last April, she and other volunteers took part in the first Pink Pajama Polar Plunge, an event she started to raise money for Hallmark Health in Stoneham, Massachusetts, where a cousin of Jones is receiving breast cancer treatment. 

Other players planning to take part in this month’s tournament are coming from Boothbay, Edgecomb, Newcastle, Dresden and Gardiner, Julie Jones said.

Julie Jones is hoping that, in addition to serving as an annual fundraiser, the new event in Wiscasset will help spread word about the foundation north of the Bath-Brunswick area. As more people and businesses in the Midcoast hear about the foundation, the result could be more donations, volunteers and fundraisers in other towns, she said. “It could really turn into something.”

For more on the volleyball event, call Julie Jones at 207-522-8240; for more on the foundation, its fundraisers or information on how to donate, visit www.deansnell.org. The Dean Snell Cancer Foundation is also on Facebook.