Former Northport High School music teacher dead at 76

The most obvious goal of teaching is to educate. But for Walter T. Schneider, the hope was also to inspire.

The former Northport High School music teacher accomplished both of these aims repeatedly over his 35-year teaching career. Schneider, who was 76, died of leukemia at his second home in Southold on March 8.

“He was inspired and inspiring,” former student Philip Thomas said. “Everyone who met him walked away feeling good, feeling inspired. That was the kind of energy he had in the classroom. ”

Born in the Bronx, Schneider began taking piano lessons at an early age. By the time he was 8 years old, he had begun working as a butcher shop delivery boy to earn money to buy a baby grand piano, said his son, Christopher Schneider of East Northport.

Walter T. Schneider earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees in music from the City College of New York. After serving as a first lieutenant in the Army for two years, he continued his music education in Kassel, Germany, his son said.

He took his first teaching job at Valhalla High School in Westchester County, where he met his future wife, Susan DePasquale, a French teacher. They married in 1968 and moved to East Northport, which Schneider considered his primary home.

In 1969, Schneider began working at Northport High School, where he taught music, music composition and theory, and electronic music. He introduced the latter to the school in the 1970s, often bringing the then-cumbersome Moog synthesizer to school on his bicycle.

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Schneider started the Northport High School Composers Concert, at which students perform their own original pieces or have their works performed by other musicians.

“He nurtured people’s talent,” said Thomas, 59, of Putney, Vermont.

While Schneider took his students to see operas and exposed them to non-Western styles of music, he also sought to learn from his students, Thomas said.

“He would take the time to find out what the kids were listening to back then, which was the Rolling Stones and Emerson, Lake and Palmer,” he said. “But then he would introduce us to Beethoven and Bartók. It was a two-way street.”

At home, Schneider continued his role as nurturer, his son said. In the winter he helped his three children build snowmen. In the summer, he went fishing and clamming with them, or just talked with them on long walks.

“He built the biggest treehouse I’ve ever seen,” Christopher Schneider said. “He did a lot of things with gusto and originality.”

Walter T. Schneider wrote a number of original compositions for piano and compiled many of them into a printed volume that was performed at the Long Island Composer’s Alliance Concert in 2012.

After retiring from teaching in 1999, Schneider spent time gardening, and also took up painting, singing and tai chi.

In addition to his son and wife, Schneider is also survived by son Walter F. Schneider of East Northport; daughter Marisa Regan of Port Washington; brothers Albert Schneider of upstate Oxford and Edward Schneider of Yonkers; and six grandchildren. A funeral Mass was celebrated at St. Anthony of Padua Roman Catholic Church in East Northport, and he was buried at St. Philip Neri Cemetery in East Northport.

By Denise M. Bonilla

denise.bonilla@newsday.comdenisebonilla

Denise Bonilla has worked at Newsday since 2003 and covers the Town of Babylon, including the villages of Lindenhurst and Amityville.