Camden inventor, business man dies

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CAMDEN – Harvey Picker lived “the most extraordinary life I’ve ever known,” Jack Sanford, a former business associate and friend, said Wednesday.

Picker died March 22 at age 92. He was a physicist, inventor, educator, businessman and philanthropist, according to his obituary. Picker was born in New York City in 1915. He graduated from Colgate University in 1936 and from Harvard Business School with an MBA in 1938. During that time he also studied at Oxford University.

For 15 years he owned Wayfarer Marine in Camden and was credited with an idea that converted the business from seasonal to year round. And Picker also had careers in science, business, government and education.

The name Picker is known in connection with X-ray film. Picker’s father started Picker X-ray, now NRC Picker, that produced air-dropped X-ray labs for the Army in World War II and the Korean War, among other cutting-edge products.

At the end of the war, Picker and his father sent a check for $3 million – the company’s profits from those field X-ray machines – to the U.S. Treasury and explained that the family did not wish to profit from the war effort, according to the obituary.

Picker later led his company into such fields as cobalt treatment for cancer and ultrasound and for nuclear imaging diagnostics.

At age 50, he sold the business, earned a doctorate, worked briefly in the diplomatic service, taught political science at Colgate and then served at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs for 11 years. He helped found the Picker Engineering Program at Smith College, the alma mater of his wife, Jean, who died in 1990. She served as a U.S. delegate to the United Nations.

“By all accounts,” Sanford said, “she was smarter than he was, and that’s really saying something.”

Sanford called Picker a “great visionary. He would see things so far ahead of anyone else.”

“I was on several different boards with him, in addition to his being a client,” said Sanford, a local lawyer. “He had a one-hour rule: If the meeting didn’t get over in one hour, people weren’t prepared.”

Sanford said Picker had very high standards and self-discipline.

“He would row his shell every summer in Camden Harbor until the year before he died,” Sanford said. “He kept his shell by the traveling dock at Wayfarer. He’d go out early in the morning, pick up his shell, walk down the ramp, get in, and go for a nice long row.”

He single-handedly sailed his 45-foot ketch, Branta, until four years ago, when he began relying on push-button trimming of the sails and assistance of a crew.

In 1982, Picker bought Wayfarer Marine and built building No. 1, which allowed the company to work on major boats.

“That was a huge change,” Sanford said. “He recognized the need to get southern boats, or Caribbean boats, to Maine so that the workforce could be year-round and not just seasonal.”

Wayfarer Marine today has 45 year-round employees and 10 subcontractors, according to Human Relations Manager Jeff Lewis.

Picker ran Wayfarer until 1997 when Sanford bought his share of the business.

Sanford described Picker as affable and friendly with a witty sense of humor.

“He told a reporter 10 years ago that he had lived long enough so that he no longer had to worry about dying young.” He said that “a long-term investment is buying green bananas,” Sanford recalled.

Sanford described Picker as wiry, a little less than 6 feet tall. “When he got older, his frame started to shrink, but his brain didn’t shrink, I can tell you that,” Sanford said.

Although Picker was very wealthy, Sanford said, he never was in a circumstance where he tried to get away with something.

“In every single case, he would ask, ‘What’s the right and honorable thing to do here?'” Sanford said.

At the request of former Gov. John McKernan, Picker served on the Maine Health Care Finance Commission in 1989 and then on the Blue-Ribbon Commission to Overhaul the Workers’ Compensation Insurance System.

In 1987 Picker was among the founders of the Camden Conference. In 1996 he was the prime mover in the funding and construction of the Centennial Wing of the Camden Public Library.

U.S. Sen. Olympia Snowe and her husband, former Gov. John R. McKernan Jr., today said in a statement that “we were very saddened to learn of the passing of this extraordinary individual. Harvey was beloved by his adopted home of Camden, and Maine was truly the beneficiary of the breadth of his talents, philanthropy and irrepressible spirit.”

Picker is survived by two daughters, Bobbi Hamill of Boston and Gale Jean Picker of Seattle, Wash., and three grandchildren, Jean Picker Larsen, Evelyn Picker Larsen and Matthew James Mrachek.

gchappell@bangordailynews.net

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