Elwood "Woody" Hubbard Schneider Jr.

Woody was born in 1931 to Elwood and Betty Schneider in Evanston, Illinois. The same year, Elwood moved the family to Kalamazoo, Michigan for a job at American National Bank before starting his own investment banking firm, EH Schneider & Company. Woody’s two younger sisters, Martha and Sarah completed the family in 1935 and 1941 respectively.

At age 14, Woody left home for boarding school at Deerfield Academy in Deerfield, Massachusetts. Summer visits to his cherished Little Point Sable on Lake Michigan were limited to two week stays with his grandparents, John and Catherine, until 1948 when his parents built their dream cottage, White Caps, nearby his grandparents. Many years later Woody & Lynne would build their own dream cottage a half mile down the beach where they would summer for the rest of their lives.

Woody attended college at Northwestern University (one of many Schneiders to attend including his grandfather, his parents, his sisters, his uncles Russ and Bob Schneider, two of his kids – Jeff & Lissa, and his soon to be fiancé, Lynne Price, among others). Following school, he was given a reprieve from the draft due to a childhood skull fracture, but he enlisted anyway. Luck would have it that he was on a troop ship headed for the war zone, when his unit was called on to disembark in Yokohama, Japan. There he was assigned to a Radar team in Tokyo, avoiding the front lines. He literally dodged a bullet, perhaps many. Lynne eventually would travel on her own to Japan where they married on June 25, 1955.

Later, Woody’s work as an international banker took him and Lynne to Michigan, Arizona, New Jersey, The Bahamas, Puerto Rico, Illinois, France, New York and Florida, of which NYC was his favorite. Between work and leisure travel he visited an astonishing 82 countries on six continents.

Woody was an avid tennis player, and holds the current record of 10 men’s singles titles at the Little Point Sable Association, just edging out another LPSA tennis legend, Steve Armstrong, with 9. Woody earned the nickname “The Energizer Bunny” for looking completely sweat drenched and exhausted before the end of the first game of the match, only to come back and win in 3 sets time and again.

Snorkeling and spearfishing were other of Woody’s passions, but perhaps more so was his love of language, travel and world affairs. He was fluent in French, nearly so in Spanish, could manage in German and passable in Italian. The last he learned essentially as a “party trick” so he could impress his companions by unexpectedly breaking out into Italian on the first stop of a group trip to Italy. During the summer Woody could regularly be seen sunning on his deck reading a French or Spanish book with a dictionary at his side for prickly translations. On other days he’d devour the latest edition of The Economist which he claimed was the best source of in-depth, unbiased global news & opinions.

Woody’s life was nothing if not fascinating. Babe Ruth gave him an autographed baseball when they happened to have adjoining rooms in a Florida motel. Woody was the boxing champion of the Oceana County Fair, and once got his hands on and drove the car of the notorious Philadelphia gangster Legs Diamond. In post WW2 Vienna he spent time with an American bartender who turned out to be a Soviet spy, and later that year he set off alone on camelback into the Algerian desert which was an extraordinarily dangerous place. All this before the age of 19. Later, he escaped unscathed after weekending in the capital of Haiti on the eve of an attempted military coup to oust the murderous Papa Doc Duvalier. Along the way he gave up drinking, a decision he made without coercion or hitting bottom, and by going cold turkey with no relapses in 43 years till the end of his life. He provided encouragement for many who shared this journey.

He’s survived by his daughter Lissa and Claude Tsai and grandson Michael Rebozo, son Jeff and daughter-in-law Lynn and grandkids Racheal Brusca (and Steven), Clint Shapley, Tiffany Khan (and Raheel) and Katelyn Gray (and Chris), and great granddaughters Lyla, Georgie and Charlotte. Woody was predeceased by his wife Lynne and son Russ.

Like his wife Lynne, Little Point Sable was the center of much of Woody’s life. It was there that he met many of his closest friends. And where family returned each year no matter where around the world they were spread. And it will be by the stone church there, by his wife Lynne, that Woody’s ashes will be laid to rest.