Iris Snider worked as a registered nurse and physician assistant.

Iris Snider worked as a registered nurse and physician assistant. Credit: Danette Werner

Iris Snider, who had a long career as a registered nurse, a physician assistant and an amateur painter, remained upbeat while dealing with the effects of multiple sclerosis and being a single mother, her daughter, Rachel Snider, said.

Snider died April 6 of complications from the coronavirus in an assisted living facility in Rockville Centre, her family said. She was 67.

Rachel Snider, of Medford, said her mother enjoyed dancing and skiing and was “very artistic,” someone who liked drawing and painting.

Snider said her mother wanted originally to be an artist but turned to the medical field, which she came to love. "She didn’t want to be a starving artist," her daughter recalled.

Her mother practiced in a number of medical fields, including pediatrics and neurology in hospitals such as the former Booth Memorial (now New York-Presbyterian in Queens) and Montefiore Hospital in the Bronx.

Among the fondest treasures of both her daughter and her sister, Danni Werner, of Malverne, is a photograph of Snider, with a person in a full Mickey Mouse custom, alongside a young patient in a pediatrics AIDS ward, they said.

Snider was raised in Bayside by her parents along with her sister and a brother. Their father was a Holocaust survivor, Werner said.

Snider contracted multiple sclerosis in her early 20s, before her daughter was born, and divorced her husband when the daughter was 3, the sister said.

She carried on raising her daughter as a single mother, had a circle of friends — “sisters by other mothers and brothers by other fathers,” her sister said she called them — and a fulfilling career as a nurse and later a physician assistant, her relatives said.

When her MS symptoms became too debilitating for her to continue working, she retired, her sister said.

Snider had a "super green thumb," able to revive dying plants, Werner said.

If Snider had a special fondness, it was for flamingos. Her daughter said the Snider home in Little Neck was filled with representations of flamingos in all forms, figures and pictures.

And it wasn’t because her mother graduated from the University of Miami, in a state where the bird is found in flocks, the daughter said. Both Snider’s daughter and her sister said the fondness for flamingos predated her college years and was something that was part of her nature.

When the assisted living facility had an ugly sweater contest, Werner said, Snider was pleased when she brought her one with a flamingo.

In addition to daughter and sister, Snider is survived by her sister’s husband, Jeff; her brother, Eric, of Levittown; and nieces Raianna, Alexis and Emma, and nephew Austin.

The family plans a memorial service and a celebration of Snider’s life when restrictions on gatherings are lifted, her family said.

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