First of all, I want everyone here to know that I always have called my father “Daddy.” The reason for doing that is a funny one: You see, in the 1960s, there was a television show starring Marlo Thomas (Danny Thomas’s daughter) called “That Girl.” In that show, the character Marlo Thomas played, Anne Marie, always called her father “Daddy.” I wanted to be just like “That Girl,” (I even cut my hair to look like her) so I have called my father “Daddy” ever since.
Now…Here is the story of my wonderful and loving father’s life!
On March 24, 1929, Arthur Sanford Schneider was born at Hollywood Hospital in Hollywood, California. My grandparents, Fannie Ragin and Max Schneider, were married a little over a year before on New Years Day 1928. Grandpa Max immigrated to the USA from Russia in 1903 when he was five years old and Grandma Fannie, was born in the USAin 1903, but was a child of Jewish immigrants from Romania who came to the USA in the late 1800s.
My Grandma Fannie loved to read King Arthur stories, so that is where the name Arthur came from. His original birth certificate said his name was Samuel Arthur, but that was an error; he was always Arthur Sanford Schneider. (His birth certificate was not amended and corrected until 1954!)
The entire extended Schneider family lived in Long Beach, California when my father was born, and shortly after his birth, he and his parents bought a home at 169 Granada Avenue in Belmont Shore, a beach community in Long Beach. My dad lived in that home until he left for college.
That 169 Granada house kept getting flooded because in those days there was no breakwater on the beach in Long Beach, so my grandfather purchased a larger house on the other side of Second Street, also on Granada Avenue and moved his family there. That larger house was given to my sister Lynnellen by my father and she raised her three, now adult, children there.
After my father’s brother Robert Schneider was born, Grandpa Max enrolled my dad in Southern California Military Academy, a boarding school on Cherry Avenue in Long Beach. In those days, children were often sent away, and my grandfather thought sending my father to boarding school would make things easier for my grandmother.
Both my grandmother and grandfather came from large families and all of my Grandpa Max’s siblings lived in Belmont Shore. The oldest of my father’s uncles, Irving Schneider, helped found Temple Israel Long Beach and the Long Beach Jewish Community Center.
My dad attended Temple Israel’s religious school as a child and also taught at their religious school as a teen. He was confirmed at Temple Israel too. (The Jewish reform movement didn’t do Bar Mitzvah’s then, so my dad did not have a Bar Mitzvah. He told me that they didn’t even learn to read Hebrew at the temple’s religious school.)
The extended Schneider family was large, so although my father only had one sibling, his cousins were like his brothers and sisters. Most of my grandmother’s sisters and brothers lived in Los Angeles, so he didn’t see the Ragin cousins as often. In the 1930s and 1940s and even in the 1950s and 1960s families connected together on a regular basis though.
After his short time at Southern California Military Academy, my dad attended Lowell Elementary, Rogers Junior High School, and then Wilson High School.
In recent years, every time my dad and I would drive by those schools, Daddy would start singing his school songs. Fortunately, I recorded him singing those school songs on video.
Rabbi Fox is going to share his screen now and play the school songs video for us!
(Play “Daddy Sings School Songs” now)
My dad was only 16 years old when he graduated from Wilson High School and he graduated in the top of his class. After graduation, he went off to UCLA and lived in a dorm for male students.
One night, a small group of college students got together from both the women’s and men’s dorms to go out to eat and see a famous jazz singer perform. That is how my father and my mother, Edith Kadison Schneider, met.
It seems like they fell in love immediately. My dad was only 19 years old, and when he told my grandfather that he wanted to marry my mom, Grandpa Max asked him to wait until he turned 21.
My mother’s nickname was Edie and my father’s nickname was Art. I just learned that they had pet names for one another “Google’ and “Googlely” and that was before GOOGLE!
Art and Edie eloped on July 12, 1950, but my mother’s father, Joseph Kadison, suddenly died of a heart attack on July 15, 1950, so they kept their elopement secret and were married again at a wedding, conducted by Temple Israel’s Rabbi Grafman, on August 20, 1950.
They honeymooned on Catalina Island and rented a little cottage there for a week.
Shortly after their wedding, they headed by train for an interview for Chicago Medical School and in 1951, my father was accepted as a medical student at Chicago Medical School. My mother supported them while my dad was a medical student. She was a social worker in Chicago and they lived in downtown Chicago.
After graduating from medical school in 1955, Art and Edie briefly lived in Iowa City, for his medical school internship, but my father’s asthma was so bad in Iowa (he just couldn’t breathe there) that they moved back to Southern California and he completed his internship in Los Angeles.
I was born on May 7, 1956. My brother Billy was born on January 3, 1958, and my sister Lynnellen was born on February 18, 1959.
My dad volunteered for the military in the late 1950s and became a busy Air Force captain and doctor at Mather Air Force Base’s hospital near Sacramento, California.
In 1961, just before I was about to begin Kindergarten, Art and Edie purchased their first home in Canoga Park in southern California’s newly developed San Fernando Valley.
He secured a position at the V.A. Hospital, the Wadsworth VA and was on the part time teaching staff at the UCLA Medical School. We lived in the Valley for three years. One day, abruptly, my dad announced that we were moving to Belair so he could be closer to his work. I was eight years old then.
Before we moved to Belair we began ice skating. Daddy told me he always wanted his children to skate and skated recreationally since he was a little boy and even asked my mother to marry him at Iceland in Paramount, California!
Now Rabbi Fox will share his screen with and play a video of my dad talking about skating as a boy.
We began skating in 1964 at Valley Ice Skating Center in Tarzana, California. At first we skated two days a week, but quickly increased our lessons and practice to four days a week.
In 1966, when I was ten, my dad made a drastic decision: He moved our skating training and lessons to Culver City’s ice rink. That’s when our lives dramatically changed; from then on, we skated at least five hours a day, six days a week and we began our daily practice at 4:30 in the morning!
My mother told my father when she had to get up at 2:30 am to get us ready to skate the following: “I married a nut!”
Daddy was at the rink every morning watching every minute of our early morning practice and lessons and after work, he was back at the rink.
My father also immersed himself in his work. He was a hematologist, but through an opportunity at the hospital, in addition, he became a pathologist. Eventually he was the head of the pathology department at the Veterans Administration and an assistant professor at the UCLA Medical School.
During the time he was on the faculty at UCLA, he along with another physician, discovered a disease similar to Sickle Cell Anemia called Triose Phosphate Isomerase Deficiency.
In 1971, my dad was offered the position of the head of the department of Pathology at the City of Hope. It was shortly after that that he moved our family to Arcadia (near Pasadena) to be close to City of Hope.
(Tell, how my dad got an A in physics for me here if I feel like it and if there is time.)
My dad wanted the best for his children. He made it possible for my brother Billy to train with the best possible skating coaches who took his talent as far as it could go. He made it possible for me to excel in ice dancing.
In 1975, he was offered the position of department chair at the Chicago Medical School. He was a very popular professor there and he was there for 40 years! There he co-wrote the textbook Pathology that was used in medical schools all over the world.
In addition, my dad served and volunteered with US Figure Skating as a figure skating judge for over 50 years.
One of my most precious memories is my father’s determination to skate too. Almost weekly, I’d skate with him during his ice dancing lessons. Skating with my dad is one special memory I will treasure forever.
Daddy never thought about himself. He always wanted to do things for others. When something was wrong he would help us fix it. If we needed help, he was there to help us.
In 1984, my dad had a heart attack and had quadruple bypass surgery. The surgery saved his life but also changed it. After he recovered, hedecided to become a marathon runner! He ran in the New York Marathon, the Chicago Marathon, the Long Beach Marathon, the Boston Marathon, the L.A. Marathon and the Denver Marathon!
(Tell story about running around Nassau Colosseum at the 1987 Nationals if there is time.)
He helped and encouraged one of my skating coaches, Darlene Gilbert, relocate from Indiana to Southern California since he believed strongly that her talents were needed in the Los Angeles area. He found jobs for his friends and my friends. He found skating partners for me. He watched every single lesson my children had during their competitive skating days. He made sure he was always at every graduation or milestone that his children and grandchildren had. He tutored my sister’s son Cody to help him get through high school. He bought my family a piano since he wanted my children to play on a real piano rather than an electronic keyboard. He was so proud when my brother Billy graduated from Denver University Law School. He read every one of the articles I wrote when I was the Figure Skating Expert for About.comfor 10 years. He was so proud when I published my book My Skating Life: About My 50 Plus Years in Skating.
He gave us advice. He was supportive of any decisions we made.
He was so proud at my brother Billy’s wedding! He was thrilled when my sister gave birth to her first child, his first grand child, Drew!
During the time my parents lived in Chicago, my dad invested in properties in Colorado and also in Long Beach.
After my mom passed away in early 2011, little by little, my dad spent more and more time in Colorado. Slowly he became part of my immediate family. We stayed with him in his Colorado house as much as we could. He travelled with me and my children to skating competitions and test sessions.
Daddy began to feel like my own children were a part of him. Our lives were completely intertwined. My husband Dan was like a son to him.
He was thrilled when two of my children joined Disney On Ice and together, Daddy and I traveled to see Joel perform in the show in many different locations in the USA. Unfortunately he only got to see Rebekah perform live in the show one time when we traveled to Wichita, Kansas to see Joel and Rebekah perform in early summer 2021.
Daddy loved to eat out and wanted to treat anyone who would join him for a meal. All of us who joined him for meals out always had a great time and were so grateful.
In 2015, at the age of 86, my dad officially retired after 40 years at the Chicago Medical School. I proudly watched him march with the faculty in the last medical school graduation he attended.
I began to take my dad to enjoy his condo in Long Beach on a regular basis beginning in early 2015. We would spend a month or two in California together and then a month or two in Colorado. Together we became active at Temple Israel Long Beach. My dad really loved again being part of the same congregation he attended as a child and teen and young adult. He was part of the men’s club and Temple Israel’s Tanach class gave him a birthday party in 2016!
Daddy even joined me for scooter rides through his hometown Belmont Shore. Together we took walks on the beach. In Colorado, he’d go with me to the mountains and hang out in the lodge while I skied.
We were SO close.
Wherever I went, my dad would go, so my friends became his friends too. I was told by everyone that met him that he was the most wonderful and kind man they’d ever met.
Also, through the efforts of my cousin Luci Janssen, my grandma Fannie’s oldest sister’s grand-daughter) my dad and I connected with extended family on my grandmother’s side. How very special was that! We became close to my father’s first cousin Martha and her daughter Leah. Also, he got to see his cousin Marilyn and her son Harold and his wife Carolyn. They became special to us and we became special to them.
After my late Uncle Bobby died, Daddy helped his brother’s life partner, Shelley, get settled in a senior apartment complex in Long Beach. He helped me take care of Shelley until the day she died on June 9, 2019.
I also was able to connect my dad with my mother’s relatives. He became very close to my cousin Cheryl (my mother’s brother’s daughter). We also connected to my mother’s first cousin, the late Esther Kadison Albert, who also was a Temple Israel member, and her companion Jay Leff. Cheri and Esther became very close to my dad.
These relationships were and are priceless.
In 2019, shortly after his 90th birthday, my dad was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s. As his short term memory faded, I needed to help him more and more. He began to rely on me totally. Although we knew he had Alzheimer’s, we didn’t let his condition slow him down. Dan and I took him out to eat since it made him so happy. We took him to the movies. We took him to hear our dear friend Sal Mancini sing. We watched television with him. My children did all they could to spend quality time with him and help him.
During the 2020 pandemic we decided to stay with him all the time in his Colorado home. He missed eating out during the lockdown, but we did our best to make him happy with family meals at home.
When we spent most of the winter 2021 in Sun Valley, Idaho, we took Daddy with us. We celebrated his 92nd birthday at Gretchens restaurant at the Sun Valley Lodge.
I took him to Long Beach for the entire summer of 2021. He enjoyed walking in Belmont Shore along Second Street and on the beach bike path. There were some wonderful Temple Israel events during thesummer that I took Daddy to. He was so happy!
We are grateful that after my dad went to the hospital in late November 2021, that he was able to come home from the hospital in time for Thanksgiving and that he got to spend Thanksgiving Day with family in his Colorado home. My husband Dan, two of my children, Joel and Annabelle, and I were with him and cared for him while he was in home hospice care in his Colorado home. Joel, Annabelle, and I were with him the day he died in his own room and in his beautiful house.
We are thankful for the amazing and wonderful life he had.
Daddy: I love you SO MUCH. Thank you for being my Daddy. I will always carry you inside me. I love you.
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