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DON SCHNEIDER
Classification: Law
Current position: Club Treasurer
Favorite job ever: It’s a tie between the 27 months I spent in Peace Corps and the 41 years I spent as a civil practice attorney. I was lucky in that the last 32 years I was self-employed with no boss. My work ranged from trying 64 jury trials to helping distressed kids as their guardian ad litem, and an incredible variety of work in between. Now I’m a mostly retired lawyer and enjoying that, too.
Education: North Platte, Nebraska all 12 years. Four years Dean’s List and Phi Beta Kappa graduate of the University of Nebraska- Lincoln with a B.A. in history with minors in English and political science. Masters degree in history in education at University of Nebraska- Kearney. Juris Doctor With Distinction from University of Nebraska Lincoln College of Law.
Professional awards or accomplishments of note:
- Published over half a dozen law and history related scholarly articles in various publications including The Nebraska Lawyer, For the Defense, Nebraska History, The Nebraska Law Review and the Nebraska Business Journal.
- Managing Editor of The Nebraska Law Review my senior year.
- Drafted three statutes that were eventually passed by the Nebraska legislature.
- Tried 64 jury trials. Handled several appeals to the Nebraska Supreme Court.
- While president of the Dodge County Historical Society helped negotiate a needed street widening of an historic avenue in Fremont that resulted in only two trees destroyed.
- Was a finalist for appointment as a judge to the Nebraska Court of Appeals (but sadly the governor appointed another finalist who happened to be his college roommate).
- Earned a University of Nebraska Regents Scholarship as an undergraduate and a University of Nebraska Regents Law Scholarship at the law college. Those were the university’s most prestigious scholarships at the time.
- Earned an American Jurisprudence best student award each of my three years at the law college, 1st year in contracts, 2nd year in civil procedure, 3rd year in criminal procedure.
Family: Youngest of 7 children. My dad was a car and truck mechanic. My mom had miscellaneous jobs. My parents only had 6th and 8th grade educations due to the poverty of the 1930s in rural Nebraska, but my parents read books all the time and were great supporters of my education. Besides education their greatest gift to me was they instilled a work ethic that carried me through life.
Grew up in: North Platte, Nebraska. Lucked out in that NPHS had an outstanding school system at the time with accelerated classes from 4th grade on. Great teachers.
Roles in Rotary: Current Treasurer Englewood Rotary; board member multiple years in both Englewood and Fremont; Co-Chair of Haitian water well project, we raised enough to fully fund two wells; two-time Paul Harris Fellow; 40-year member of Rotary between Fremont, NE and Englewood, CO; Seargent-at-Arms for the Fremont club for several years. Proposed and got accepted for membership the first five female members of the Fremont Rotary Club.
Most recent book – A Covenant With Death, by Stephen Becker.
Favorite music – Classic Rock, like Stones, Queen, Bob Seeger, Heart, Eagles ... you get the idea.
Favorite movie – No idea, too many choices. I’m a sucker for romantic comedies like You’ve Got Mail, Sleepless in Seattle. Also big event action movies like Gladiator, Reds and Independence Day.
Favorite vacation – A three-week trip across Russia on our own after Peace Corps in 2010. Started with an overnight 3rd class train from Kiev to Moscow, and included a 38-hour 2nd class train from Volgograd (Stalingrad) in southern Russia to Chelyabinsk in western Siberia where we hooked up with a Russian businessman we had hosted for a week at our home eight years earlier while he was on a Rotary Exchange visit. Ended up in St. Petersburg, which is a city I had wanted to see since reading about Peter the Great in high school. We did it all on our own, no guides, no packaged tours, and getting by on the street with the Russian we learned living in Ukraine during our Peace Corp service.
Favorite food – Italian.
Quotation to live by – “Do it right and right away.” Advice from the first lawyer I went to work for, a man named Ray Simmons. Ray was a great trial lawyer and a former clerk for a Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court.
Best advice I ever got –When I got my first real job at age 16, working in a bakery starting at 3:30 a.m., my dad drove me to work the first morning. As I was starting to get out of the car he said to me, “Don, you’re going to work for another man now. When you’re there, by God you work for him!” I never forgot that, especially years later when representing my clients.
I’m a big fan of. . . Husker football and traveling all over the world.