Class Of - Shawn Snider

28 Class of ‘58
'
Albert Schlabach
Eunice (Schrock) Mast
she will work as a School Nurse. We move the store into the city and we move to the city.
1987 – We move to the suburbs and sell the store. I begin to work for a design firm. We design various
products, such as toys, etc. and we design exhibits for tradeshows and museums.
1991 – In the next few years, I work for two other exhibit houses and start my own exhibit firm. My clients have
included Kodak, Xerox, Bausch & Lomb & numerous other clients.
2002 – I close my business. I look for work but, other exhibit companies think I am too old to be creative, so
I go to work for a contract electronics manufacturing company. I am hired to layout printed circuit boards. It
was an experiment to see if a designer could do the layouts easier and more effectively than an engineer. It was a
success, and I very much enjoyed exposing and expanding my abilities this late in my career.
So I ended my working career at a company called Alden Scientific.
I continue to work/volunteer as the Building & Grounds Facilities Manager for our Church. I have been
doing this work for the past 10 years. The First Unitarian Church in Rochester, NY was designed by architect
Louis Kahn. He is one of the 20 th century’s most renowned architects and this is his only church. We have people
interested in architecture visit our church from all over the world. I very much enjoy organizing a great group of
volunteers and doing hands on work as we maintain and enhance our building and grounds.
Beth has retired from her job as School Nurse Supervisor for the Schools of the City of Rochester. She
continues to work, part time, in a consulting position for the American Lung Association as she coordinates a
program that seeks to keep children with asthma healthy at home and at school.
Both of our daughters have married good men and we now have 3 wonderful grandchildren. They all live in
northern Virginia near DC. So we are on the road a lot as we travel down to visit and to do our grandparent task
of spoiling them. We have 2 ½ year old Jamie, 2 year old Molly and 8 month old Lainey.
In spite of some bumps in the road, I have very much enjoyed my life. I have a wonderful family and I have
done some very cool stuff along the way.
I continue to enjoy nature and bird watching. I very much enjoy photography and computers. I enjoy being
Santa Claus. We love to take trips to visit family and friends. And we enjoy working in our community garden.
We think of moving south to warmer climes and to be closer to our children, but have yet to put together a plan.
In the meantime we enjoy western NY and the Finger Lakes region. Come visit some time.
—Bert Schlabach
“THE LINES ARE FALLEN UNTO ME IN PLEASANT PLACES; YEA I HAVE A GOODLY
HERITAGE.” Psalm 16:6
Dear Classmates,
How did we get to this stage of life so fast?! I know I can’t cover 50 years of living but will share a few things.
After marriage in ’61 to James Mast of Virginia, we lived in my home area of Oregon for three years, then moved
to his Virginia home community for 40 years, and now have been in Washington State for over three years.
James had a heat stroke years ago which is one of the reasons we moved here, 45 minutes to an hour north of
Spokane, where we don’t experience the high humidity that Virginia contends with.
Some folks would say that I was unemployed or didn’t have a job all these years, but I will say that I
WORKED! We had our joys and sorrows like anyone else as we were blessed from 1962 to 1983 with 13
children, including a set of twins. So I had the most important job in the world, being a wife and mother.
When you work with eternal souls, you realize the seriousness of life, and we are only given one chance to lead
them back to God who gave them. And we can say with the apostle John in III John 4 that “I have no greater
joy than to hear that my children walk in truth.” What a job!
We had large gardens and canned and froze lots of food; the record summer, we put away over 2000 quarts.
During our busiest years, we used 36 loaves of homemade bread every two weeks. We had lots of guests,
especially as our children got older and brought home friends. Our record on that was 125 visitors for meals or
overnight or both, in a six-week period. My busiest years were when we had five pre-schoolers and it seemed I
was always racing the clock. We did some traveling as we could…we took 10 children to Mexico and the western
U.S.; another time, we and 12 children were to western Canada and Oregon. More frequently, there were
shorter trips, closer to home. And in recent years, James and I finally made it to Guatemala for a five-week visit
where we were with three of our sons and families (16 grandchildren), visiting the missions and sightseeing, and
counting our blessings. We have so much!
Through the years, James did many kinds of construction, a bit of dairy farming, lots of truck driving, and we
raised broilers for Tyson.
Our health has been mostly good. James especially so. I have contended with diabetes for the past 25 years
but didn’t slow down a lot because of it. Since we live here, James had a painful bout of gout, and an even more