Florence Schneider

Florence Swift was educated at Duchesne Academy in Omaha. Both she and her older sister, Frances, were Ak-Sar-Ben princesses, indicating that they were part of Omaha's upper crust in their youth. I expect the crash in 1929 considerably straightened her circumstances. After graduation, she attempted to teach school, but was unable to maintain discipline and so quit to join the Omaha World Herald as a society reporter. There she met and married Adolph J. Schneider, and the couple moved to New York City, where her husband worked first for NBC radio and then for the News Department at NBC-TV, which he eventually came to head. In 1954, the couple moved to Sarasota, Florida, where her sister lived. She eventually took a job as the Women's Editor of the Sarasota Herald Tribune and then the Sarasota Journal, from which she retired. In retirement she enjoyed traveling and learning to play the recorder. Her friends remember well her penchant for breaking out into "You better shoot straight with your mamma, or your mamma take a shot at you" on the streets of cities she would visit. She had a delightful, ebullient personality.