Harry Frederick Schumann, Jr., died Friday, July 23, 2004, in
San Jose.
Harry Frederick Schumann, Jr., died Friday, July 23, 2004, in San Jose.
He was 80. He had been admitted to Santa Teresa Hospital on June 29, suffering with shortness of breath. His condition worsened, and his wife and family were with him throughout his stay.
Mr. Schumann was born in Palo Alto and attended San Jose High School and San Jose State University. In his own words:
“After graduation from San Jose High, I joined the U.S. Navy and was trained as a Naval Radioman. I went to the Aleutian Islands and worked in the radio stations at Kodiak and Dutch Harbor. In late 1943, I was transferred to a U.S. submarine for duty (the USS S-46). It was an older “Boat” of the S Class. I spent most of 1944 in the Aleutians and then went to Hawaii and San Diego.
“I attended San Jose State from January 1945 to 1950. After college, I worked for the Phone Company (Bell System) for three years. I left the phone company and worked for Standard Stations for eight years.”
Eventually, Mr. Schumann became manager of the Standard Station in Coyote, and one in Gilroy, his transfer the reason he and his family first moved into town.
It was his working at a Standard in 1951 where he first noticed Alice Eileen Jose. Because he knew her older brother, he was seen often at their house fixing and repairing cars.
Mr. Schumann never paid any attention to her until the day she and her friend stopped for gas. Eileen remembers that “Harry came out and waited on us. He was impressed, I guess, with our shorts so we talked to him for a while and we left. About a week later he called our house but he couldn’t remember what my name was, so my mother answered the phone and he wanted to talk to her daughter.”
“Which one?” he was asked, and upon hearing Eileen’s name, he asked to speak to her. They dated every night for nearly a month before he asked her to marry him. She accepted his proposal and they were married in June 1952 at the Trinity Episcopal Church in San Jose and were married 52 years. The couple set up housekeeping in San Jose, before buying their first and only home in Gilroy in 1959.
Mr. Schumann then worked as an electronic technician, lab supervisor and engineer, testing explosives to meet government specifications, at Teledyne McCormick/Selph in Hollister for almost 20 years. He left there in 1979 to work as a quality engineer at Lockheed Missile and Space Company in Sunnyvale, where his duties included performing corrective action on explosive components in U.S. submarine missile systems. He retired from Lockheed in March, 1992.
“I enjoyed my radio work so much in the Navy that I got my Amateur Radio License after college in 1957. It’s a very rewarding hobby and I have made many friends during the years that I have been active,” Mr. Schumann once said.
His call sign was K6HWR. His involvement with the Military Affiliate Radio System started after receiving his license. He operated Amateur Radio “nets” where other local “hams” would discuss equipment and advances in communication, and participated in a communication connection after the 1964 Alaska earthquake, providing information in and out of the stricken area before the advent of citizen’s band communication and of course, cellular phones.
He was one of the founding members of the Gabilan Amateur Radio Club (GARC), and was instrumental in the communications set-up at the Garlic Festival, cooperating with local law enforcement in traffic and crowd control.
He was featured in Operation SAREX, the Space Amateur Radio Experiment, in 1984, when a ham radio station at Las Animas School in Gilroy, involved students there to contact the astronauts aboard the Columbia Space Shuttle. He was a mentor for all local hams. The hams he guided would say he did so many things for them that it would impossible to list.
Mr. Schumann was a member of the Free and Accepted Masons (Keith Lodge), serving as Master in 1979, a member of the Magnolia Chapter (#45) OES, and a member in good standing of the U.S. Submarine Veterans of World War II. He has been an Elder at The Gilroy Presbyterian Church, past member of the Gilroy Elks Lodge and a member of THETA CHI Fraternity.
Besides being survived by his wife Alice Eileen, Mr. Schumann is also survived by his sister, Marian Minninger of San Jose; children, Steven “Sonny” Schumann and his wife Julie of Arroyo Grande, Valerie Schumann Bowe and her husband Michael Bowe of Los Angeles, Virginia Schumann, and Robert H. Schumann; grandchildren Melissa and Kathryn Alatorre and Robert Bimbi III of Gilroy; Jennell, Angela and Nicholas Tizzano of Arroyo Grande, and Michael and Sean Bowe of Los Angeles; nieces Judy Jackson, Diane Jacks, Cheryl Gould, Susan Supan, Liane Schreffler, Caryn Kenny and their families.
He was preceded in death by his parents, Harry and Leona Schumann.
A memorial service will be held at 2 p.m., Tuesday, August 3, 2004 at the Gilroy Presbyterian Church. Arrangements by Habing Family Funeral Home, Gilroy.
The family requests donations be made to the Gilroy Presbyterian Church or to the Shriners’ Children’s Hospital in Palo Alto.
