Richard Schneider Passes Away at 76

Richard Schneider, who during his three terms as mayor was widely known as “Sheboygan’s No. 1 cheerleader” and the driving force behind such top city attractions as the Harbor Centre Marina, has died.

Schneider died about 9:30 p.m. Monday at the Sharon S. Richardson Community Hospice in Sheboygan Falls after a long battle with cancer. He was 76.

Schneider served 12 years as mayor, from 1985 to 1997, and before that was a city alderman for eight years.

“He loved every minute of it (being mayor),” said Ann Schneider, 76, his wife of 55 years. “The people, the interacting with the people.”

Besides the $12 million marina, some of the major city improvements that occurred over Schneider’s tenure as mayor included the revitalization of the Sheboygan Riverfront, the Sheboygan Industrial Park, the Eighth Street Bridge, and the improvements to Kohler Memorial Drive. But it was Schneider’s people personality that friends, family and even former political rivals fondly remember the most.

“He was always around and very personable with the citizens of Sheboygan,” said former Mayor Richard Suscha, 74, who Schneider defeated by 621 votes to win the mayor’s office in 1985. “He was a good ambassador for the city.”

Suscha said Tuesday that the two men maintained a cordial relationship in years since, and that hearing news of Schneider’s death was “a shame.”

Schneider had been ill for about a year, family members said, and underwent surgery in an effort to beat his cancer. He went into hospice at the beginning of the month.

“He was sick for the last year and he’d call me every day and ask me how was my new job?” said one of his sons, Rick Schneider, 54, of Sheboygan Falls. “This is a man who’s sick in bed and he’s asking me how was my day?”

Rick Schneider said his father had a real gift of remembering people’s names and that, plus his love for Sheboygan and drive to see it succeed, helped him with programs such as getting the marina built.

“My dad knew how to get the right people talking,” Rick Schneider said. “Getting them together so things could happen. People who might not ordinarily talk. But he got them down to sit at the same table, and they walked away friends. And they got stuff done.”

Richard Schneider was born in 1935 in Kiel and worked in the leather industry for many years in several cities, before landing at Armira in Sheboygan. It was while working there, Ann Schneider said, people said he ought to run for political office.

After four terms as alderman, Schneider was elected mayor. He was re-elected in 1989 and 1993, and the city was honored by Reader’s Digest magazine in 1997 as “the best place to raise a family.”

“He was sincere with the people he worked with, he was sincere with his family and I think in today’s day, people are out to get whatever they can get, and honestly, he was just one of the most sincere people you’re ever going to meet,” said his daughter, Kelley Foran, 47, of Germantown.

There were a few bumps during Schneider’s tenure. In 1990, he was the first Sheboygan mayor ever censured by the Common Council, over a flap related to the fate of the city’s incinerator. But he came back to win a third term in 1993, and was quoted in a Press article in announcing his candidacy that, “I could stand on the roof of City Hall and shout it all day … Sheboygan’s a great place, and I love my job.”

In Schneider’s last bid for mayor in 1997, he was handily defeated by James Schramm, 7,572 to 4,755.

“He said he wasn’t going to run and at the last minute he decided to run and all his people were already on other campaigns and it didn’t work out,” Ann Schneider said.

Before his illness, Schneider worked part time at the Zimmer Funeral Homes and he and Ann were regular volunteers for years at Wildwood Baseball Park, helping spruce up the facility for Sheboygan A’s games.

“He took on the ballpark as his personal project,” said Denny Moyer, longtime Sheboygan A’s general manager. “He and Ann could be found there on an almost daily basis pulling weeds in the flowerbeds and sweeping up all the litter and peanut shells under the bleachers.”

The Schneider children also remember their father as a wonderful family man and someone who genuinely tried to make Sheboygan a better place.

“We were lucky,” Rick Schneider said. “The world’s a little sadder place without him. I think that speaks for all of us. We all won the lottery.”

Story by Bob Petrie of the Sheboygan Press. Reach Bob Petrie at bpetrie@sheboyganpress.com and 453-5129.