Heidi Sutter

David Craig Schauffler was born on February 17, 1928 in Highland Park, Illinois to Leslie Reynolds Schauffler and Katharine Keene.  When Dave was very young, the family moved to “The Farm” in Long Grove.  While there he attended The Farm School and a brief stint at New Trier High School.  In his sophomore year, he went to The Putney School.  Although music-making, farming, and hard physical work were a huge part of Dave’s childhood, the seeds of Dave’s interest in formal choral singing, gardening, wood-working were sown at Putney.  Dave made frequent reference to his time at Putney and his time there informed everything he did throughout his life.  In 1946, after his Putney graduation, he spent the year between high school and college bicycling 4000 miles across Europe with his soon-to-be brother-in-law, Neil Albright.  Dave purchased his bicycle in Paris, France, a top-of-the-line Peugeot 3-speed, aluminum frame straight from the Peugeot factory.  They slept under bridges and in bombed-out cathedrals.  Dave carried a small guitar on the back of his bike and made friends and music along the way. 

Returning to the States at the end of that year he joined his older sisters Eah (Anna) and Susie (Katharine) at Black Mountain College in the mountains of North Carolina, a progressive work/study college where he spent time with those who would become lifelong friends.  At Black Mountain Dave’s major studies included coal-truck driving, vegetable gardening and music making.  Though the bulk of his lifelong friends would be from Black Mountain, he decided he was wasting his father’s money driving coal trucks and learning the newest folk tunes, so he transferred to the University of Wyoming where he continued to study music.  He received a BA in Music with an emphasis in Voice and a minor in French.  He interned at the Episcopal Cathedral in Laramie where he met his future mother-in-law, Lydia Corthell. He became engaged to and later married Martha Corthell. 

Dave’s first teaching job was in Lusk, Wyoming, where he was responsible for K – 12 choral music with some band and orchestra on the side.  He and Martha moved back to Long Grove, Illinois where he built a house for himself and his bride on The Farm where their two children, Danny and Peggy, were born in 1957 and 1960 respectively.  Dave then attended Northwestern University where he received a Master’s degree in Choral Conducting.  At the same time he was teaching choral music at Elgin Academy, singing in a professional choral group, farming, and conducting the local Methodist church choir. Summers he worked for the Chicago Commons Association at Camp Reinberg as well as Pleasant Valley Summer Camp.  

In 1963 the family moved to Portland, Oregon where Dave took a position at the Catlin Gabel School as choral director, woodshop teacher, and handyman about campus.  He worked at Catlin until 1977.  He bought the house that he lived in until the end of his life in 1965. During that time he and Martha divorced and he met Allen Neill, a cousin.  They were married in 1971 and had two children, Heidi in 1974 and Zanni in 1977.  All these children adored their dad.  When Dave left teaching he continued his interest in community service and large vehicles and took a job as a city bus driver with Tri-Met, Portland’s mass transit organization,  After a few years at the wheel, Dave developed the education outreach programs for Tri-Met and was their guitar-toting education outreach coordinator until he retired in 1990.  

During all of his adult years, in Illinois and Oregon, Dave continued to practice singing, both formal and informal, guitar-playing, wood-working & house construction and large-scale gardening.  During the summer months, Dave and friends tore apart, reconstructed, and created 3 major additions to the home that he lived in until he died.  Dave and his vision turned that house from a one bedroom, one bath residence into a five bedroom, two bath home.  He loved the John Deere tractor that he used for mowing, gardening, road repair, and snow removal.  His shop and the tools therein was his special place. 

Most people think of Dave as a gentle, kind, rather quiet, plain spoken man with strong progressive political views. He was always ready to help out when someone had a project or a problem.  He was terribly fond of his students when he was teaching and felt that work-with-the-hands and life-long music-making should be part of everyone’s life.  He felt that anyone could learn to sing.  When Dave went to work for Tri-Met, he developed a real fondness for his colleagues and passengers, especially those for whom life had dealt a tough hand.  After he retired, Dave continued a life of reaching out to others, and keeping the home fires burning.  He became a great cook:  not a fancy recipe-using cook, but a guy who could take all the mean and nasty things out of the back of the ice-box and stir them into something comforting and yummy. He wasted nothing. 

Above all, Dave was devoted to his family.  It was important to him that his four children grow up to be generous, hard-working, honest, considerate-of-the-other-guy, kind, gentle people who would be thoughtful about their own problems and the problems of the world.  He felt that hard work and singing-together could eliminate a lot of strife. 

As Dave ambled into old age, he developed some heart problems and COPD, which caused him to have to carry an oxygen hose wherever he went.  Having his very active wings clipped in this way was a huge frustration to him, but he was a good sport about it as he was about most bumps in the road of life.  He spent much of the last day of his life sitting outdoors and talking about how lucky he felt to live in such a beautiful place.  He died peacefully in his favorite chair, scratching the ears of Pippa, the most current of a long line of family dogs.  



The music never stopped.