Harry Max Foster; Newsman Founded Foster Farms

Harry Max Foster, 90, founder and patriarch of Foster Farms poultry and dairy company. In 1939, Foster was a city editor at the Modesto Bee when he and his wife, Verda, made a down payment on a repossessed 80-acre farm near Empire using $1,000 borrowed on a life insurance policy. They began raising turkeys and expanded in the late 1940s to chickens and dairy cattle. He eventually concentrated on the dairy portion of the business, handing the poultry division to his son Paul, who died in 1977. On Monday in Modesto.