Florence Steinberg Schumacher '64

Like many other college seniors, Linda Ruth Cohn, another friend and I decided to travel to Europe together after our UCLA graduation in June 1964.

I had come to UCLA from Winnipeg, Canada as a 17-year-old in September 1960. I met Linda in classes as we were both English majors. My other friend and I lived in Dykstra Hall on campus as freshmen.

I had saved for the trip by working part-time at the UCLA pharmacy in the medical center for three of my four college years. That was also where I met Jerry Schumacher, a USC graduate who was a pharmacist there and later would become my husband.

Shortly after graduating in June 1964, armed with “Europe on Five Dollars a Day,” my friends and I took off to England, our first stop on what was to be a summer long trip through Europe. While visiting Oxford, we met a young man who had just graduated with a Ph.D. from NYU and was travelling alone. He befriended us and invited us to drive with him to Paris in the new MG sedan he had just purchased. Little did we realize how our decision to drive with him would change our lives.

On June 25, as we were driving to Paris, he passed a car and crashed into an oncoming car. He was not an experienced driver and was found guilty of the accident.

Linda, sitting in the passenger seat in front, was killed instantly. The rest of us were very badly injured and hospitalized in Paris. Our families rushed to be with us.

Linda’s family was devastated by her death. A gifted student, she would have contributed so much to the world. She was a kind and caring friend and a devoted daughter and sister.

I spent two months in the American Hospital where I had several surgeries. I flew home on a stretcher in a full body cast, and then spent another month at St. John’s Hospital. It took me another three months at home before I could walk again. Thanks to the support of my mother and family, I recovered but was left with a permanent stiff right knee.

Fortunately, the driver had a large insurance policy on the car which eventually paid all our medical bills and other past and expected future expenses.

The driver was badly burned, but he recovered, and after the accident he became a professor and had a successful career.

My other friend recovered from serious head trauma. She had aspired to live in New York before the accident, but she remains in the L.A. area.

I feel blessed to have lived a full life despite my permanent leg injury. I married Jerry in Los Angeles in 1966. We enjoyed a 54-year marriage before his death in 2021. Shortly after getting married, we left Los Angeles, and we lived in Ohio and Michigan before settling in the Boston area, as Jerry’s academic career blossomed from professor to dean. I earned two master’s degrees in English and marketing and had successful careers first teaching English and then as a health care marketing professional. We raised two sons who both we went on to graduate schools and successful careers in business and law. They married and produced five grandchildren. Sadly, my older son died in 2015 at age 46 of cancer.

My two stepchildren, who live in the Los Angeles region, have had successful lives. They gave us three grandchildren and two great grandchildren.