Service set for Fisher snowplow founder

ROCKPORT — A memorial service is planned Saturday for Dean L. Fisher, whose namesake company became nationally known for its snowplows.

Fisher, 82, died Thursday, July 6, at his home in Rockport. A service will be at noon Saturday, July 15, at Vesper Hill Children’s Chapel in Rockport.

The company, Fisher Engineering of Rockland, is now a division of Douglas Dynamics LLC of Milwaukee and is owned by AK Steel, Middletown, Ohio. It is one of the leading U.S. manufacturers of snow and ice removal equipment.

Dean Fisher built the company from the ground up, starting off sharing a building on Main Street in Rockland with the Farrar-Brown Co. in 1948. Four years later, he moved his operation to a barn at his home, where he constructed plows for large commercial trucks.

Born in Kansas, Fisher earned degrees in civil engineering and mechanical engineering from Kansas State College of Engineering and Agriculture, which is now Kansas State University, and the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, Md., respectively.

During his commission in the U.S. Navy during World War II, Fisher worked with a Seabees construction battalion and served as second in command of a Seabee warehouse complex at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii.

The company’s Web site says Fisher designed the first snowplows for Willys Jeeps.

His intent was to build snowplows in Boston, but after visiting relatives in Maine, he fell in love with the area and moved to the midcoast.

He designed and built a deeply concave 6-foot plow blade of sturdy steel. The plow could be angled manually and raised and lowered by a lift arm moved by a hydraulic ram.

As the business began to grow, Fisher returned the operation to Rockland, leasing a building on Mechanic Street. The business later moved to a site off Water Street in Rockland where Sherman Wharf was situated.

The firm now employs more than 160 people at the Rockland site.

Fisher was active in civic organizations such as the Camden Lions Club, the Salvation Army, Rotary International and the Camden YMCA. He served on the SAD 28 board and was a member of the Northeast Health Foundation.

He was a member of the First Congregational Church, Camden.

His wife, Betty Ruth Fisher, died in 1996.

Memorial donations may be made to the Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson’s Research, P.O. Box 2010, Grand Rapids, Mich. 55745-2010.