Teacher dedicated to students

12/9/2000

Nadine Schroeder, a teacher in Toledo Public Schools for 32 years and known to scores of basketball players as the coach's wife who baked cookies for every game, died of a brain tumor yesterday in Hospice of Northwest Ohio, Perrysburg Township. She was 58.

Mrs. Schroeder, of Wood County's Middleton Township, taught sixth grade the last 15 years in the Horizons program for gifted and talented pupils.

“She was very concerned about the children,” Mary Bell, Horizons coordinator, said. “Her strong points were science and social studies programs.”

Mrs. Schroeder often took vacations - to the Rocky Mountains; to an archaeological dig - just to gather material for school.

“She was thinking education almost every day of her life,” her husband, Barton, said.

She had four degrees from the University of Toledo: a bachelor's degree in elementary education and master's degrees in guidance and counseling; English as a second language, and gifted education. She taught earlier at DeVeaux and Pickett schools.

Her husband was head basketball coach at Rogers and the former Macomber high schools, and “for every game, without fail, after taking care of her kids, she would make a fresh batch of chocolate chip cookies or cake,” he said. “She was an unbelievable, unwavering individual.”

A Toledo native, she was the daughter of Nellie and Arnold Brown, who was a longtime athletic director at Woodward High School. She was a graduate of the former DeVilbiss High School.

Surviving are her husband, Barton; sons, Jeff Schroeder and John Porter; daughter, Jenny Schroeder, and five grandchildren.

Services will be at 10 a.m. Tuesday in the Peinert Mortuary, Waterville, where the body will be after 2 p.m. tomorrow.

The family requests tributes to the Hospice of Northwest Ohio, in Perrysburg Township.