Content area
Full Text
If you visited Irvin S. Naylor in his cement-block office with its low ceilings, thin-paneled walls and off-green shag carpet in an aging industrial park on the outskirts of York, your expectations of him and his companies might be modest.
Meeting Naylor, who pads around his office in moccasins and khakis, might affirm your impression. The horse-racing prints, polished sea turtle shell on the wall and late-model Audi parked outside would be the first clues that you had been deceived.
Naylor is the founder and majority owner of Snow Time Inc., the company which holds Ski Roundtop, Ski Liberty, and Ski Windham (of New York) whose last season's earnings were on a par with some of the larger ski areas nationally. He also founded and owns Cor-Box, a corrugated box manufacturer which grosses $18 million annually and occupies the same industrial park as Snow Time Inc. And yes, he owns that 16-acre industrial park and several other properties in the York area.
All this begins to explain why Naylor, in the midst of the worst ski season in his 30 years in the business, is still smiling. "Paper prices are up," he said. "All boars rise (including the profit margins of corrugated boxes)."
Besides, Naylor has just arrived back from Grand Cayman Island, where he scuba dived, freshened his tan and attended the 25th anniversary of the world's first and only sea turtle farm which he founded. Although a 1972 law prohibiting the export or sea turtles to the United States put Naylor out of the turtle products business, the farm still operates under new ownership as a tourist attraction.
Naylor still likes turtles. Naylor sponsored a three-year research project by former York Dispatch reporter Peggy Spengler and her husband, Sam Fosdick, culminating in he writing of "Last Chance Lost?" about his green sea turtle farm and how the species may benefit from commercialization.
Notwithstanding the book title, Naylor doesn't believe in lost chances. "Life has a way of coming around." he said. Naylor started his life as a York entrepreneur after in 1963 losing his job at a manufacturer of cigar boxes and experiencing the breakup of his marriage to his first wife.
That year, Naylor borrowed $20,000 from his mother to start...