Joviality rules at tribute to B.A. Schoen

The Baldwin Foundation for Education’s recognition of Robert “B.A.” Schoen, held last Saturday at the high school, opened with a joke, and then the speakers kept right on cracking wise. “I was walking all around looking for B.A. before this thing started and I couldn’t find him,” Stephen Witt, president of the Nassau BOCES board on which Schoen serves, quipped to a crowd that included Schoen. “I didn’t realize he was capable of looking so sharp. He’s usually wearing red plaid pants or something. I didn’t recognize him.”

Witt set the tone for the tribute to Schoen, a long-time Baldwin activist, historian, sportsman and school board member. At times the gathering felt more like a roast than the recognition of a community activist’s many outreach efforts.

Schoen’s daughter, Molly Quigley, who came all the way from Washington, D.C., to speak about her father, recounted how he had modified a pair of water skis for training purposes, a project she said now fills two categories in her life experience: Learning to Water Ski and Nearest to Death. She also mentioned that among the many things her father taught her was that “a headlock is illegal unless you include an arm.”

In addition to being a school board member since 1996, a past president of the group Reform Education Finance Inequities Today and a board member of the Long Island Education Coalition, Schoen is also a passionate advocate of amateur wrestling. He wrestled for Baldwin High School and Minnesota State University, Moorhead, and the final speaker who addressed the crowd of 70 or so was two-time National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics champion Frank Mosier, a college teammate of Schoen’s.

Mosier, of course, had his own tongue-in-cheek take on the honoree. “The first time I saw B.A. Schoen in his plaid shorts,” he began before sending some heartfelt accolades Schoen’s way, “I thought he was our mascot.”

Although the tone of the afternoon was light and the speeches were frequently interrupted by laughter, the BFE’s 12th annual spring celebration had its serious moments. Sharon Knoernschild, president of the foundation — a nonprofit organization of alumni and friends of the Baldwin Public Schools — was all business when she announced that Schoen had been unanimously elected to join past award recipients including Barbara Fullerton, Claudia Rotundo, Jerry Brown and Mary Jo O’Hagan.

And Quigley concluded her remarks with a note of sincere admiration. “The children of Baldwin,” she said, smiling at her father, “are fortunate to have B.A. Schoen as their advocate for public education.”