Gary Schall dies at 67

He made everyone feel like they were the most important person.”

Sam Schall, son

Gary Schall connected with people, from a movie-like meeting with the woman who became his wife, to being an educational leader, a talented musician and a father of three.

Channeling his love of life at home and in the classroom, Schall left his mark on his family and his school community.

He died on Nov. 18, after a two-year battle with prostate cancer. The former Lawrence School District superintendent and Woodmere resident was 67. He was living in Saratoga Springs.

“He made people feel special,” said Sam Schall, one of his three grown children, along with Jerry and Hayley. “When a stranger spoke to him, his eyes would widen and he would smile. He made everyone feel like they were the most important person.”

Born in the Midwood section of Brooklyn on March 1, 1955, to Jerry and Marilyn Schall, Gary was the third of their five sons. Music became a part of his life when his oldest brother, Ira, taught him to play the drums.

A conservatory-trained teacher sparked Schall’s passion for music in fourth grade, when he visited his elementary school. Years later, Schall’s high school social studies teacher, Rowena Vrabel, signed him up to audition for the Manhattan School of Music.

At the private music conservatory, Schall had two life-changing experiences. First, he began performing the music of Steve Reich while studying with James Preiss in the school’s preparatory division when he was 16. Reich is a composer who, in the 1960s, helped develop the minimalist school of music. Schall played with Reich for the first time in 1975, when, at age 19, he was the youngest member of the ensemble. He eventually performed with Reich for more than four decades.

He loved to tell the story of his other impactful experience at the School of Music, his wife, Debbie, née Dube, said, “at any opportunity.” Gary recalled it for the Herald in 2011, when he became superintendent. “I was in the cafeteria eating a tuna fish sandwich,” he recounted, “and she was descending this beautiful staircase, and it was love at first sight — for me, at any rate.”

The couple was married for 42 years. “Over the years, we loved to play duets,” Debbie said. “He on the marimba, me on the piano. This past summer, we were playing a duet. Thankfully a cousin videotaped it.” Their last duet was the fun, upbeat “Fiddle-Faddle,” by Leroy Anderson.

Schall’s educational career before he came to Lawrence took him to the St. Augustine School of the Arts, in the Morrisania section of the Bronx. As chairman of the arts department, he integrated the arts and academics, and was featured on CBS’s “60 Minutes” as well as in a PBS documentary, “Something Within Me,” about the school’s program, which won three awards at the 1993 Sundance Film Festival.

Being an educator was part of Schall’s DNA, his son Jerry said. “When he was working at St. Augustine in the South Bronx … he was able to see so much potential in everybody,” Jerry said.

Coming to Lawrence in 1996, Schall became the school district’s director of music, and transformed the program. First he obtained an $18,000 grant for new uniforms as the high school prep band morphed into the marching band. Two years later, he created a dance program that employed unique learning methods. Then Schall and the district’s director art Anne Young, joined forces to create the Academy of Fine and Performing Arts at Lawrence High, which offers courses in dance, music, musical theater, drama, technical theater and the fine arts.

“Making the connection with the kids,” Debbie said, was her husband’s favorite part of being an educator. “A young girl who had some problems sent a thank-you card, writing, ‘You saw me for who I was.’ He would talk with anybody, and he was accepting.”

Schall led the school district through the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy. For nearly four months, the high school students occupied the middle school, where his office was, and he encouraged the displaced youngsters to call him Uncle Gary as he served as a comforting figure during an unsettling period. He also taught students yoga, and forged bonds with the community’s several yeshivas and other local religious institutions and organizations.

“One of Gary’s frequent statements to our students and performers was a passionate, strong and sincere ‘You’re beautiful,’” said Ann Pedersen, who succeeded Schall as superintendent and worked with him for more than three decades. “He saw beauty in people, and we saw it in him. His impact in the lives of students and colleagues is not something that will be forgotten.”

Not a person to surrender to his weakening condition, Schall and his son Sam performed together one last time at Dixon Place on Manhattan’s Lower East Side on Aug. 30. “It was a magical evening,” Debbie said, “something our family will never forget.”

Two months later, Schall steeled himself and walked his daughter, Hayley, down the aisle at her Oct. 29 wedding. Jerry and his wife, Morgan, are expecting on Christmas Eve, and they visited the senior Schall in hospice. That last day, he felt the baby move.

“I’m biased, but easily he was the greatest father, and that was equally communicated,” Jerry said. “Nothing went unsaid.”