Life and Career
Snyder was born Dimetrios Georgios Synodinos in Steubenville, Ohio. According to his New York Times obituary of April 22, 1996, Snyder's family roots were on the island of Chios, Tholo potami (Θολό Ποτάμι) in the Aegean Sea. As a teenager in Ohio, he became acquainted with bookmakers. Snyder and his eventual wife Joan, lost three of their five children to cystic fibrosis.
According to the autobiography titled Jimmy the Greek by Jimmy Snyder, Steve Herskowitz (editor), and Mickey Herskowitz, he bet US$10,000 on the 1948 election between Thomas Dewey and Harry S. Truman, getting 17–1 odds for Truman to win. In a later interview he indicated that he knew Truman was going to win because Dewey had a mustache and "American women didn't trust men with a mustache".
He invested money in oil drilling and coal mining, but when those ventures failed, Snyder moved to Las Vegas in 1956 and began a weekly pro-football betting line.
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“The remarkable thing is that it is the crowded life that is most easily remembered. A life full of turns, achievements, disappointments, surprises, and crises is a life full of landmarks. The empty life has even its few details blurred, and cannot be remembered with certainty.”
—Eric Hoffer (1902–1983)