Our family friend Hennie Schneider passed away on 24 December 2003, from a stroke a few days earlier. She was in her 80s. Her death notice began:

... HENNIE SCHNEIDER (nee Rand), beloved wife of the late Saul Schneider; loving mother of James Schneider of Highland Park, Ill.; dear mother-in-law of Dr. Shana Weiss; beloved sister of Abby Rand of NY, NY; loving grandmother of Chloe and Bryn Schneider. ...

But that, of course, doesn't begin to suggest the web of connections that Hennie forged. She was a sweet person: funny and persistent, thoughtful and caring, cynical and gracious. We met Hennie a decade ago, when Paulette served with her on the Montgomery County Library Board. We continued to visit Hennie when she retired from the Board and moved to a nursing home a few miles from here. Hennie loved to take the five of us to the Parkway Deli nearby, where she would toy with her food and then insist on paying the check and sending us home with a gargantuan turtle cheesecake. Such a lady!

Paulette, Merle, and I were fortunate to be able to attend Hennie's funeral on the 26th, where the cantor spoke and sang with amazing spiritual power, and where Hennie's sister gave a moving, heartfelt eulogy. The interment was equally memorable, on a windy winter afternoon in an old, small cemetery on the eastern side of Baltimore. Hennie's body rests now next to her husband's.

I tried once to sketch, in iambic pentameter, a fragment of a conversation with Hennie; see DearHennie (29 Apr 2001) for the result. It's not too successful, but reading it now I can still hear, rather distantly, Hennie's voice ...

(see also JohnsonCondolences = http://www.his.com/~z/johnson.html, DeepSympathies (30 May 2001), ... )

TopicProfiles - TopicPersonalHistory - 2003-12-27

(correlates: PrayersOfComfort, CardThatPoet, InMyJournal, ...)