Harold Alfond, the founder of the Dexter Shoe Co. and a philanthropist, died on Friday morning at the age of 93.

He donated tens of millions of dollars to the University of Maine and to other colleges, health centers and organizations.

From 17 years he was suffering of prostate cancer and at the time of his death he was in Maine for treatment.

He also donated $7 million to a center for cancer treatment in Augusta that was opened this summer and bears his name.

Alfond was a native of Swampscott, Mass., and was planning to return home in Palm Beach, Florida after the treatment.

Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, said that the Harold Alfond Foundation, Maine's first private foundation, gave more than $100 million to charitable causes.

She said: "Though he battled cancer himself for 17 years, he was still thinking of others as he led the effort to build a place where Mainers struggling with the disease could go to receive the best possible care close to home," referring to Maine General Medical Center's cancer center.

He also donated millions to St. Joseph's College in Standish, Thomas College in Waterville, the University of New England for a new medical school and the Goodwill-Hinckley Homes for Boys and Girls.

President Robert Kennedy of the University of Maine said that Alfond will remain in the memory of the Mainers as one of the most important and influential residents of the past century.

He said: "His legacy will continue through the lives and contributions of the countless people whose lives have been made better through his support of important causes and institutions,” the Associated Press reports.

Although he never went to college, Alfond received five degrees from five colleges and universities.

He worked at the Kesslen Shoe Company in Kennebunk, Me., just like his father, as a superintendent after finishing high school.

After he found out about an abandoned plant in Norridgewock, Maine, from a hitchhiker in 1939, he bought it along with his father for $1,000 and founded the Norrwock Shoe Company.

They sold it in 1944 for $1 million, but he remained its president.

In 1958 he bought a mill in Dexter and opened Dexter Shoe Company.

The company was manufacturing good shoes at a reasonable price and he opened the first outlet store in Maine, thus becoming a pioneer of the factory outlet store.

In 1993 Alfond sold the company to Berkshire Hathaway Inc. for about $420 million, the New York Times reports. Gradually the company's manufacturing plants in Maine closed and in 2001 all Dexter shoes were manufactured in other countries.

Payless ShoeSource Inc. becomes in June 2007 the exclusive U.S. seller of Dexter brand shoes.

Dorothy "Bibby" Alfond, his wife died in December 2005. They had four children, 13 grandchildren and 16 great-grandchildren.