A Determination To Raise Money In Cancer Fight
By Mike Siroky
PLYMOUTH � Call it a labor of love, wrapped in a solid pink steel ribbon.
John Snyder is a man who is used to solving problems. His work behind the scenes as a teacher when at Bremen was legendary. He coached most every sport, especially those on the middle school and junior high levels, whenever there was a need and no one else seemed willing to step forward.
His classes creatively an-swered the challenges of in-cluding students. Once, when the concept of worm farming seemed a little esoteric for his science class, he built a multi-layered worm condo on his classroom, showed the children how to maintain it and helped htem turn a profit by selling . . . worm guano, a particularly pungent, yet powerful fertilizer.
When his wife, Linda, had a many-sided candy dish she really admired, he used it as a basic template for the octagonal home he constructed for them, plenty of windows and angles.
Always handy, he led teams of fund-raisers, work shifts for children who wanted to make the annual eighth-grade trek to Washington yet from families who couldn�t afford it. They had specials on erecting sheds, cleaning yards, whatever it took to build the bank account for the little travelers.
Teachers also received his help. A teacher once stranded in Florida after a family tragedy found out later Snyder and another teacher made the trip to recover her car, which had broken down, had gotten it fixed and silently left it in her driveway, no explanation and no bill.
Guys like him never retire
He is still an assistant for the varsity girls basketball team at his old school but now, retired as a teacher, has come up with a project in which he fashions 14-guage steel outline signs of your favorite school mascot, properly power-coated with the school colors for really nice yard signs.
He gave up teaching to concentrate on Linda. She is fighting breast cancer.
John�s latest labor for the love of his life is to make pink ribbons of steel, the strength, color and symbol for those fighting the fight. He has come up with two designs, one for those still fighting and one for those celebrating as survivors.
He wants to make them at cost and donate the profits to the annual Relay for Life fund-raiser in June. The local leaders of the relay are so taken with the idea they have borrowed his only two prototypes and carried them off to Indianapolis to sell the idea statewide.
�I make �em the same as the school signs,� he said. �Power-coated 14-guage steel. All I really wanted to do was raise money for the Relay for Life.
�Linda is doing real well. And I had been making the yard signs. Any school. They have been selling pretty well. We are at the convention of athletic directors this week.
�Anyway, it just came to me to make the ribbons. I showed it to a couple of the ladies who run our relay and they just had to take them to Indianapolis.
�I wanted to do it for Linda, make them for her and then we decided we could raise money. I want to see how much we can raise.�
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