Alfred Schneider

Alfred "Fred" Schneider, born in 1931 in Vienna Austria, peacefully passed this morning, May 20th, 2018, at his group home in Scottsdale, Arizona. Family and friends will gather in the early evening on Friday, June 15, 2018. Please email lisajackson09@yahoo.com for the times and location. A private family burial will be held at Rose Hill Cemetery, Mechanicsville. Fred was born in Vienna in 1931 to Frederick and Margaret Schneider into a comfortable life with his older brother Paul. Shortly after Anschluss by Nazi Germany, the family escaped to the US via passage booked on the Normandy by Fred Klein "Uncle Fred" who ran a large furniture store from Detroit. Through the efforts of Uncle Fred, over 35 persecuted Austrians were liberated from Nazi Germany. Fred grew up in Detroit and excelled at mathematics and all things electrical in nature and after graduating from high school, was drafted in 1952 and served in the US Army Signal Corps where he learned radar technology. After some years working at various companies, Fred went back to college and earned his BSEE from Wayne State. Fred married Susan Elizabeth Orr a few years later and had two children, Judy Schneider and David (Cindy) Schneider, before divorcing about 17 years later. Fred later married Nancy Jackson in 1977 while working at Rockwell Collins in Cedar Rapids, IA which extended our family to include John Swehla, Lisa Jackson and their families. All of his life, he worked to engineer better, smaller faster and smarter systems in the areas of security and radio communications. He co-founded Sescoa, an alarm company in Scottsdale, AZ, and created many novel and new technologies and self-monitoring systems while there. Later, he worked at Motorola in various groups including their government electronics and cellular divisions. While working with the cellular division he worked as a systems field engineer identifying the best methodologies for determining the optimum placement of cellular towers - a process still in use today. And while in Iowa and working at Rockwell Collins in Cedar Rapids, he developed one of the first built-in test systems for radios on Navy fighter jets. After marrying Nancy and working in Iowa for a time, they moved to Scottsdale and lived there for the remainder of their lives. We want to extend our special thanks to the love and care of Chris and Linda Ozarchevici for our father in his last years. Fred is survived by his loving children and grandchildren Jackie (Robert) Stiles, Jordan Fetter, Boris (Madeleine) Goetz, and Amy and Kimberly Schneider, and his great-granddaughter Margarette. He will always be remembered for his generous heart, determined nature, inquisitive and sharp mind, love of music, travel and all things sweet. In lieu of flowers, memorials may be made to the American Parkinson Disease Association or American Cancer Society.