GRANVILLE -- Retired Aladdin Restaurant chef Don Snelling is being remembered not only for the scrumptious omelets and burgers he made, but also for his contributions to Granville High School sports.
Snelling was found dead Thursday morning at a friend's home. He was 55.
A spokeswoman for the Licking County Coroner's Office said an autopsy will be performed today. The cause of death was ruled as not suspicious, she said.
Snelling died just six days after he retired as the operator of the Aladdin. He worked there for 45 years, taking it over in the mid-1990s. He started busing tables there at the age of 10.
Among the reasons Snelling retired were his health, he said in an Advocate story about his retirement published Dec. 30.
Ben Rader, who owns the downtown Granville building in which the Aladdin is located, said many old friends and well-wishers stopped at the Aladdin on Dec. 31 to wish Snelling luck on his last day.
Rader added that he saw Snelling on Wednesday and found him in good spirits, planning to relax for a while before deciding what to do next.
" He will be missed," said Rader, who plans to reopen the restaurant under new management. "Don was a master of the grill, and a pleasure to watch when the place was busy on Saturday mornings."
Linda and Steve Scott, of Granville, often had breakfast Thursday mornings at the Aladdin and already had missed their routine visit this week.
"Steve and I have been regular breakfast customers for years," Linda said. "Whenever you walked in the door, you knew Don was going to be there and you knew you were going to get a great breakfast."
Snelling, a 1973 Granville High School graduate, had not retired as the scorekeeper for the GHS boys basketball team, however, and manned the book at the team's home game Monday night against Zanesville. A replacement was being sought Thursday for tonight's Blue Aces home game, athletics department secretary Laura Whittington said.
Besides keeping the basketball and baseball scorebooks for the Blue Aces, former GHS athletics director Tim Dennison said Snelling often provided banquets for athletic teams at a reduced cost or even no cost, never asking for anything in return.
"He did a lot of meals for the teams. He was just the best fan in the world," Dennison said. "He wouldn't cheer from his position at the scorer's table, but he was always supportive and always there."
GHS teacher Scott Carpenter, who stepped down as boys basketball coach in 2010 after six seasons, estimated Snelling kept the scorebook for 17 years.
"The entire time I was here, before the first-round tournament game, he provided the team and coaches with a steak dinner -- completely donated," Carpenter said. "When we won a few games, he would do it at cost for us a couple more times.
"I can't say enough positive things for his relationship with our basketball program."
GHS classmate Bill Cost, who owns a photo studio in Newark, said everybody knew Don.
"Donnie was a great guy," Cost said. "We grew up together, and I've known him since we were kids. He worked hard, and he did everything he could to help the community and schools."
This is probably only of local interest, but it has affected me. For the last probably forty years, when I thought of going to Granville or Denison, it always included a visit to see Don and have lunch at the Aladdin. A politician you expect to get voted out, a businessman to lose his job or get transferred, but Donnie was a "constant" .... you always expected him to be there. He had a long list of friends and acquaintances, Denison Alumni, some very famous people knew Don. If you went to Denison, you knew of the Aladdin and Don. Eisner, Davidson, Holebrook and so many more. Now, the Aladdin will close, the building remodeled, a new business, a new name, and a part of my history, and that of the area, will be forgotten. The tragedy of the situation, leave a business that has been your whole life, and then pass away. To me it is a very sad, tragic ending, and his passing will be noted for a while, and then forgotten. R.I.P. Don Snelling.
