Raleigh businessman honored by Campbell students

     Real estate entrepreneur Andrew “Ben” Snellings, of Raleigh, N.C., was the recipient of the Free Enterprise Award presented by Dr. Ben Hawkins, dean of Campbell University’s Lundy-Fetterman School of Business, on March 28, 2006. The award is an annual presentation of the Campbell chapter of the Adam Smith Club.
     Snellings graduated in 1950 from Wittenberg College in Springfield, Ohio, with a Bachelor of Arts degree in American history. He subsequently passed the nation-wide competitive Civil Service exam with 5,000 applicants and became a federal investigator in Washington, D.C. Later, family problems required him to move back home where he taught in high school.
     The family matters were resolved and Snellings, at 28, moved to Florida to pursue a new future. He didn’t know where he was going, didn’t know anyone and didn’t have a job. He got down to his last $25 when he was hired at $85 a week as the one and only salesman to sell lots at a proposed 92,000-acre development to be named Port Charlotte. The proposed development was 92,000 acres of Palmettos, pines, oaks, rattlesnakes and alligators with not a street, house, nor a resident at the time. Snellings sold the first lots and today over 125,000 persons live in the area.
     Buoyed by this success, Snellings began a career in real estate brokerage, investment and lending in Florida, the Carolinas, Virginia, Maryland and British Honduras. He met and married Geri Hubert, a university librarian who became his business partner. For the past 10 years, he has been caring for her daily as her Alzheimer’s disease has progressed.
     “A true American entrepreneur, lover of free enterprise, mentor to many others and devoted husband, Mr. Snelling’s life is a perfect illustration of what the Adam Smith Free Enterprise Award is all about and is recognition of a life well-lived,” Hawkins said.
     The Adam Smith Club is a student organization founded at Campbell University in 1977. The club is dedicated to promoting the principles of individual liberty, personal responsibility, free enterprise and minimal government.