By Vicki Prichard
NKyTribune reporter
David Schroeder remembers coming home from the first grade, telling his mother about a classmate with braces on his feet.
“I told mom the kids were making fun of him and she said, “He’s no different from anybody else; it’s your job to make friends with him and be kind to him,”” says Schroeder, who is the executive director of the Kenton County Public Library. “She was always looking for that person who needed an extra boost, or was hurting and needed a kind word.”
Schroeder’s mother, Mary Lou Schroeder, 86, of Ludlow, passed away on Tuesday, August 9, 2016, surrounded by her family. She was a homemaker, a mother and a loving grandmother.
Born in 1930, just months after the stock market crash, Mary Lou’s childhood played out on the west side of Covington during the Great Depression and World War II. In spite of dire times, her life was defined by a generous spirit of kindness toward others.
“I was always interested in hearing her stories,” says Schroeder. “She would tell me about all those “great times.” She would say everybody was in the same boat. She said, “To us, everybody was the same, living through the same thing and struggling. We didn’t think of ourselves as being poor.””
Schroeder says what always struck him about his mother was how she had grown up watching her brother Jack suffer epileptic seizures, long before Dilantin was available. She grew up watching her mother and father deal with Jack, and how he suffered.
“I think what that did for her is it gave her empathy,” says Schroeder. “She always taught us — the four kids — to be empathetic toward others.”
Mary Lou was always committed to the people she cared about.
“In my estimation, family always came first to her, then friends,” says Schroeder.
Mary Lou had long lasting friendships. He says she started a card club while in high school at LaSallette Academy and the group continued to meet until a few years ago.
“She attended LaSallette Academy and most of them were graduates of LaSallette,” says Schroeder. “Those women were very special to her.”
Faith was also always important to Mary Lou, and she enjoyed singing in the church choir. As a child she sang in the Mother of God children’s choir. Later, when she married Ed Schroeder and moved to Ludlow, she joined St. Boniface and joined the choir.
“Dad told her he moved her to the luxury of Ludlow,” says Schroeder.
She was a member of Sts. Boniface and James Church in Ludlow, where she was a past president and treasurer of the Altar Society.
In the 1960s and 70s, Mary Lou became a Eucharist Minister, taking communion to the sick and shut in parish members.
“She always enjoyed that — sitting and talking to them,” says Schroeder.
Her love of song carried beyond her church choirs to singing to her grandchildren. In fact, says Schroeder, when the nursing aids at Madonna Manor learned of her love for music, they would sing to her, knowing that she found it calming.
Ed Schroeder, her husband of 58 years, enjoyed a long political career, but Mary Lou preferred being at home.
“My dad, he’s 86, he was sheriff of Kenton County and circuit court clerk for many years,” says Schroeder. “He was in the political world and all the things that went with politics.
Schroeder says his parents had a very special relationship, and were a model to him and his siblings as to what marriage meant.
“Mary Lou was Ed Schroeder’s quiet bedrock,” says Joe Meyer, former state senator, former Secretary of the state Education and Workforce Development Cabinet, and current candidate for Covington mayor.
Ed Schroeder was sheriff and circuit clerk when Meyer was just getting started as a lawyer.
“Ed, to me, is the true definition of a public servant,” says Meyer. “Mary Lou was not much for politics, but her support to Ed was very important to him. She was very engaged in family and church, and very proud of her children and grandchildren.”
Just as Mary Lou was always there for her family, her family was vigilant in being by her side during her time at Madonna Manor. Schroeder says that during his mother’s last two years at Madonna Manor in Villa Hills, his father visited his mother every day, staying five to seven hours a day.
“We kids figured out the only way he would get rest was for us to set up a schedule,” says Schroeder. “We would tell him to go home and we each would sit with mom for a couple of hours. We kept that up for two years and that time we were able to spend with her was a blessing.”
Survivors include her loving husband of 58 years, Ed Schroeder of Ludlow; daughter, Susan (Joe) Heringhaus of Edgewood; sons, John Schroeder of Burlington, Steve (Jamie) Schroeder of Edgewood, David Schroeder of Ludlow; 10 grandchildren and 4 great- grandchildren and sister-in-law, Rose Bussman of Elsmere.
Mary Lou is preceded in death by her brothers, Richard, Jack, Louis, and Gene Bussman.
Interment was in Mother of God Cemetery, Ft. Wright, following services on Friday.
In lieu of flowers, memorials are suggested to the Sts. Boniface and James Building Fund.