3A
THE DAILY ASTORIAN • FRIDAY, OCTOBER 12, 2018
Astoria mourns former city official
Snyder’s
passions were
finance, music
JOHN SNYDER
A celebration of life will be
held from 3 to 5 p.m. Sunday
at the Elks Lodge, 453 11th
St.
By PATRICK WEBB
For The Daily Astorian
Friends will gather Sun-
day to celebrate the life of John
Snyder, the long-serving Asto-
ria finance expert and enthu-
siastic member of the North
Coast music scene.
Snyder died Sept. 18 after
having undergone a heart oper-
ation, come home, then suc-
cumbed after appearing to be in
recovery.
At 77, he was still working
for the city as a financial ana-
lyst, looking ahead to a Decem-
ber retirement.
He and Paul Benoit, a long-
time Astoria city executive now
based in California, worked
together for almost 27 years.
“When John was focused
on something, or had his mind
made up, there was no stopping
him,” Benoit recalled. “Peo-
ple might see his age and think,
‘Wow, he was still working for
the city at 77!’
“When we first started
working together, he told me
that he would work until he
was 76. As a 32-year-old, that
was hard for me to fathom.
But I knew he meant it — and
I knew he’d stick to his plan.”
Snyder was born in 1941 in
Fort Wayne, Indiana, to parents
Joseph and Catherine Snyder.
After his early schooling,
he earned a master’s degree in
philosophy from Marywood
College, a Catholic liberal arts
university in Scranton, Penn-
sylvania, studying and teaching
there from 1967 to 1974.
That passion for philosophy
featured throughout his life. In
Patrick Webb/For The Daily Astorian
John Snyder, pictured rehearsing for the Pete Seeger tribute concert in April, worked
behind the scenes as a financial analyst for Astoria, but in the local music scene he was
out front as a singer and guitarist.
a tribute planned for Sunday,
his widow, Janie Snyder, and
family members will describe
how he enjoyed embracing
new concepts and studying
spiritual teachers.
He gifted crystals to friends
and family as a “manifestation
of light” and shared T-shirts,
magnets and bookmarks that
featured inspirational sayings.
Always keen to break out of
his comfort zone, Janie Snyder
said her husband took dance
lessons, tried kayaking and
even climbed up on a zip line
with his grandchildren about
three years ago.
Dedicated to family
Snyder had come West
with his first wife, Jane Garvin
Reese, whose McGowan fam-
ily were pioneers in Chinook,
Washington. They had two
children — Sarah, who lives in
Chicago and is mother of two
of his grown grandchildren,
and Matthew, who died in a
surfing accident off Fort Ste-
vens in 1994.
Snyder gained his account-
ing credentials through Port-
land State University and first
worked at a downtown Astoria
CPA office. He joined the city
in 1985 when Edith Hennings-
gaard was mayor and served
the entire span of the Willis Van
Dusen era.
He met his second wife,
then Janie Ann Olds, in cir-
cumstances that still make her
chuckle 30 years later. “I was
working as a secretary for a
computer consulting company
on 10th Street and he came in
to check about some inven-
tory software for the city!” she
laughed.
She already had three
daughters, Sheri, Stephanie
and Laurie, and there are now
six grandchildren. Close fam-
ily members include Dono-
van Duchene, father of their
12-year-old
granddaughter,
Mathena, whom the Snyders
have helped raise.
Janie Snyder said her hus-
band put family first. “He
always said, ‘I have enough
love for all of you.’”
Not really retired
Snyder worked as city
finance director with several
prior top executives, includ-
ing Jim Flint, Benoit and Dan
Bartlett. He “retired” as finance
director in 2011, but contin-
ued working with the city as a
financial analyst.
Benoit’s career with the city
began as community develop-
ment director in 1986, and he
returned as city manager many
years later.
“John was a unique individ-
ual — extremely dedicated and
hardworking, someone who
would do anything for a friend,
a spiritual guy who read stacks
of books on religion and reli-
gious history, someone who
had all the attributes of a Boy
Scout,” Benoit said.
City Hall staff recall
decades of Christmas parties
where Snyder would provide
the music and everyone was
expected to participate.
“John would show up with
his guitar, a ream of handouts
with all his favorite Christmas
songs, and he would gather
everyone together to sing with
him,” Benoit said. “I hated sin-
galongs and told him so. He
just smiled and added an extra
song or two, just for my bene-
fit. That was his way.”
Music his passion
Performing folk music was
his passion. When Unitarian
minister Kit Ketcham recruited
the North Coast folk crowd for
an ambitious Pete Seeger 99th
birthday party in April, Snyder
stepped up.
Interviewed for a story pro-
moting the concert, Snyder
shared considerable admiration
for the role of Seeger in mod-
ern American culture. “His
vision, his connectivity with
nature and the community was
precious — and there’s some
incredible music, too,” he said.
Snyder was recommended
to participate by Mayor Arline
LaMear, and Ketcham real-
ized that he would be a perfect
accompanist for Tom and Siv
Barnum of Astoria and Long
Beach Peninsula music talent
Sandy Nielson.
“This is a guy I didn’t even
know,” Ketcham said. “He was
quiet about it. It wasn’t like
he was overly bubbly. He was
just enthusiastic in a quiet and
competent way.”
When organizers nar-
rowed the list of songs, Sny-
der told her he wanted to sing
his favorite “Guantanamera,”
the poignant Cuban song made
famous by Seeger. Ketcham
had hoped she would per-
form that classic, but Snyder’s
enthusiasm triumphed.
“This guy has been so help-
ful,” she recalled her thought
processes. “‘OK, John, you can
sing whatever you want.’” The
song features difficult lyrics
in Spanish with some English
translations. “He threw himself
into it and worked to get the
pronunciation right,” she said.
After the success of the con-
cert, Ketcham asked perform-
ers to pitch in $20 to cover the
cost of souvenir CDs. “John
pledged $100 and told me, ‘I
just want to make sure every-
one who wants a copy can have
a copy.’”
At the invitation of Sny-
der’s family, Ketcham and oth-
ers will perform “Guantanam-
era” at Sunday’s celebration of
life.
Janie Snyder will partici-
pate in an unorthodox tribute
highlighting Snyder’s favor-
ite sayings, including, “If one
is good, more is better” and
the French declaration, “No
remorse! No regret!”
One that the family espe-
cially savors is, “Have a tiny
rearview mirror and a huge
windshield.”
Katie Frankowicz of The
Daily Astorian contributed to
this report.
Washington state ends ‘racially biased’ death penalty
Execution was
already rare
By RACHEL LA CORTE
and GENE JOHNSON
Associated Press
OLYMPIA, Wash. —
Washington’s Supreme Court
unanimously struck down the
state’s death penalty Thursday
as arbitrary and racially biased,
making it the 20th state to do
away with capital punishment.
Execution was already
extremely rare in Washing-
ton, with five prisoners put to
death in recent decades and a
governor-imposed moratorium
blocking its use since 2014.
But the court’s opinion elim-
inated it entirely, converted the
sentences for the state’s eight
death row inmates to life in
Please
prison without release, and fur-
thered a trend away from capi-
tal punishment in the U.S.
“The death penalty is
becoming increasingly geo-
graphically isolated,” said Rob-
ert Dunham, executive director
of the Washington, D.C.-based
Death Penalty Information
Center. “It’s still on the books
in 30 states, but it’s not being
used in 30 states. It’s becoming
a creature of the Deep South
and the Southwest.”
Texas continues to execute
more prisoners than any other
state — 108 since 2010. Flor-
ida has executed 28, Georgia 26
and Oklahoma 21 in that time-
frame. But nationally, death
sentences are down 85 percent
since the 1990s, Dunham said.
In the past 15 years, seven
states — Connecticut, Dela-
ware, Illinois, Maryland, New
Jersey, New Mexico and New
York — have abandoned cap-
ital punishment through court
order or legislative act, and
three — Colorado, Oregon and
Pennsylvania — have adopted
moratoriums.
In New Hampshire and
Nebraska, lawmakers banned
the death penalty but saw those
decisions overturned by veto or
referendum.
The concerns cited in those
states have ranged from proce-
dural matters, such as the infor-
mation provided to sentencing
jurors in New York, to wor-
ries about executing an inno-
cent person or racial and other
disparities in who is sentenced
to death, as was the case in
Washington.
“The death penalty is
unequally applied — some-
times by where the crime took
place, or the county of resi-
dence, or the available budget-
ary resources at any given point
in time, or the race of the defen-
dant,” Chief Justice Mary Fair-
hurst wrote in the lead opinion.
She added: “Our capital
punishment law lacks ‘funda-
mental fairness.’”
Defense lawyers had long
challenged the death penalty
on those grounds, noting the
state’s worst mass murderers
and serial killers, Green River
killer Gary Ridgway among
them, had received life terms,
not death. In a 5-4 ruling in
2006, the justices rejected an
argument from a death row
inmate that he shouldn’t be exe-
cuted because Ridgway hadn’t
been executed.
This time, death penalty
critics were armed with more
data about how capital punish-
ment works, including a statis-
tical analysis by University of
Washington sociologists. Their
report showed that although
prosecutors were not more
likely to seek the execution of
black defendants, juries were
about four times more likely
to sentence black defendants to
death.
LEARN BRIDGE
IN FOUR EASY LESSONS
SATURDAYS 2:00 - 4:00 PM
Adopt a Pet!
Starting Saturday October 13, 2018
(To be followed by ongoing Mini-Lessons
and Supervised Play sessions)
ROSITA
2 year old medium
haired Tabby
With shy hesitation
and playful paws
Rosita will settle
softly in the family heart.
Come play in the delightful Mary Blake Playhouse
in the Seaside Library grounds; park at the Bob
Chisholm Community Center, 1225 Ave A, Seaside
GREAT GAME!
MAKE FRIENDS
HAVE FUN
COST: $20.
(REFUNDABLE.)
Call - Sue Kroning:
(503)738-7817 Cell: (503)739-0264
email:skroning@charter.net
to register (or just come along)
Worried about locking in a dividend
rate just when rates are
climbing? Try our Bump
See more on
Petfinder.com
Up Certificate. It pays the
CLATSOP COUNTY ANIMAL SHELTER • 861-PETS
1315 SE 19th St. • Warrenton | Tues-Sat 12-4pm
www.dogsncats.org
THIS SPACE SPONSORED BY BAY BREEZE BOARDING
same as our 24-35
month certificate,
and you can
United Finnish Kaleva
Brothers & Sisters
Astoria Lodge #2
increase your
you All
c
eat an
!
L aksLoda
5:00 pm
Downtown Astoria
Oct
Thursday, October 18 th
Starting at 11:30 AM • $ 12
Suomi Hall
244 West Marine Drive
Astoria, Oregon
the term if
rates go up!
Every month, year ‘round!
annuaL Luncheon
FINNISH BAKE SALE
Pulla (Cardamom Bread) • Rieska • Prune Tarts
rate once during
13
th
Visit Downtown Astoria on the
2nd Saturday of every month for
art, music, and general merriment!
Presented by the Astoria Downtown Historic District Association
astoriadowntown.com
facebook/astoriadowntown.com
$500 minimum balance
30 month term
www.tlcfcu.org • 503.842.7523
85 W. Marine Dr. Astoria
2315 N. Roosevelt Dr. Seaside
Federally
Insured
By NCUA
A DIVISION OF
CREDIT UNION