Gastineau Channel Memories

Scheider, Peter N. & Rosanna (McDonald)

Pete M. Schneider

Peter N. Schneider was born in St. Walburg, Saskatchewan, Canada. He arrived in Juneau in 1915, and worked for the Alaska Gastineau Mining Company at Thane as a motorman for the electric train. Rosanna McDonald was born in Selkirk, Manitoba, Canada. She was a RN and arrived in Juneau in 1918, to work as a nurse at St. Ann?s Hospital.

Peter and Rosanna were married in 1920, at the Cathedral of the Nativity in Juneau. They resided in Thane and lived in house number five. Their first son, Wendell F. Schneider, was born in Thane on September 19, 1921. he mine closed in 1921 but Peter was kept on as a motorman to haul equipment out of the mine until 1922.

The family left Thane and went to Carbonado, Washington, to work in the coal mines. Peter M. Schneider was born in 1922 in Seattle, Washington. Dessa E. Schneider was born in 1925, while the family lived in Carbonado.

In 1928, the family moved to Buckley, Washington. Peter worked at selling cars for the ?Mueller Watkins Buick? dealership of Tacoma. Pete Sr. returned to Juneau in 1932, to work for the A.J. as a bulldozer. He later became king-bulldozer and continued to work at the A.J. until it closed during World War II.

In 1935, Rosanna and the three children, Wendell, Pete and Dessa traveled north on the motorship Zapora to join Pete Sr. in Juneau. The children attended school in Juneau and each graduated.

During the war, Pete Sr. was a partner in the Gastineau and California Liquor Stores. He sold his partnership when he bought the Davis Bar which was located in the cold storage building, and renamed it the Victory Bar. He later sold it to Nels and Pauline Anderson and went to work at the Japonski Island Navy Base as a rock foreman. His next job was at Haines Cutoff doing rock work. He worked at Barrow Naval Petroleum Reserve and also at Goldstream at dredge number five. Peter retired in 1960, and moved to Orlando, Florida, where he died in 1977. Rosanna Schneider died in 1978 in Juneau.

Wendell and Pete Jr. both went into the service in 1942. Eventually they ended up in the same outfit, an Air, Sea Rescue, Crash Boat Squadron, stationed in the Aleutian Islands. They both left the service in 1946. Wendell went on to work on Forest Service boats and then commercial fishing boats. Later he worked on NOAA ships. Pete Jr. worked in the trucking business and in construction as a heavy equipment operator, mostly with various Hildre operations in the area.

After graduating from high school, Dessa went to Russellville, Arkansas to go to college. While there she met J. C. Dodd. They were married and later moved to Juneau. They had five children. Wendell never married. He died of cancer in Sequim, Washington in 1996. Pete Jr. was married once for five years and has resided in Douglas since 1950. Dessa lived most of her life in Alaska and died in Juneau of cancer in January, 2000. Her daughter Liz lives in Juneau.

	Pete, Dessa and Wendell Schneider, 1982.