Paul Schindler was delivered by a physician in a tuxedo on New Year’s Eve 1934. The doctor’s wife would later contact Paul’s mom to confirm her husband’s party-night alibi was legit.

Paul was a precocious and perceptive child, raised in Louisville and then Chicago; a tour of the turbulent South Side stockyards with his grandfather remained a vivid memory throughout his life.

When Paul was five, he moved with his parents and two older siblings to the leafy suburb of Oak Park. As a child, he took piano lessons in the studio at Frank Lloyd Wright’s personal residence on Chicago Avenue, where his music teacher then lived. His newspaper route took him to other FLW houses, often searching for front doors that weren’t necessarily obvious. At Fenwick High School he lettered as a varsity cheerleader for the school’s City Championship football team at Soldier Field.

In 1952 Paul headed to John Carroll University in Cleveland, where he carried a heavy credit load and joined the ROTC. At the end of his junior year, he entered the Society of Jesus (Jesuits) and spent the next decade studying the classics, theology, philosophy and sociology, and conversing in Latin. In the 1960s he earned a Master’s degree in sociology from Loyola University in Chicago, and taught Latin and Greek at Loyola Academy in Evanston.

Paul left the seminary in 1966 and quickly reconnected with fellow Oak Parker Lydia Woods, whom he’d met years before but never forgotten. The pair married within the year and moved into an attic apartment in Highland Park so small that relatives dubbed it the “birdhouse.” Their first child, Kathleen, was born the following year on Mother’s Day, a daughter Paul doted on and delighted in for her entire life.

Post-seminary Paul taught sociology, first at Rosary College in River Forest, then at Barat College in Lake Forest. By this time the family was living in Skokie, where their second daughter, Anne, was born. In 1969 Paul was accepted into a doctoral program at Northwestern University; his thesis, “Learning to Fail,” used participant observation methodology to uncover subtle but consequential sources of bias in the classroom. He received the PhD in Sociology in June 1970.

That fall he joined the sociology faculty at Northern Illinois University in DeKalb where he taught popular courses of 500 students and was soon granted tenure. Over the next two summers he also taught the Sociology of Deviant Behavior at the infamous Stateville prison in Joliet, an experience he found fascinating and occasionally fearsome, as when an inmate threatened violence in exchange for a passing grade. (He didn’t get it.)

By this time the family of four had moved to their “forever home,” a Sears house in Glen Ellyn. The two girls were a balm for Paul whose grinding work schedule included periodic commutes to Ohio State University to evaluate a multi-year educational leadership program for the U.S. Office of Education.

In 1974, Paul was recruited to lead the Institute for Educational Leadership in Washington, D.C. It was a difficult decision to leave the Chicago area where their many relatives lived, but the move opened up a new landscape for the family to explore, and Maryland became home for the next 50 years.

In the 1980s Paul moved into the field of conservation, first for World Resources Institute and later as president of the African Wildlife Foundation, where he worked until his retirement. The work in Africa was life-changing for Paul, who traveled there many times both for work and with his family. One of his proudest accomplishments came in 1989, when, following AWF's "Only Elephants Should Wear Ivory" campaign and strong lobbying by AWF, the international trade convention known as CITES voted to ban the sale of elephant ivory.

Active and competitive, Paul enjoyed playing tennis, racquetball and golf (he had a powerful drive). He loved romping in the ocean with his girls during annual family trips to Topsail Island, NC, riding waves and reassuring them repeatedly during the terrifying summer of 1975 when “Jaws” was released.

He enjoyed travel and, in addition to his work in Kenya, Rwanda and Tanzania, he visited dozens of countries and even toured the East Coast and Nova Scotia with Lydia riding on the back of his Honda Goldwing.

Paul was a voracious, even omnivorous reader, who would alternately pore over Greek language editions of classics by Socrates or Euripides or roar with laughter while re-reading his all-time favorite novel, “A Confederacy of Dunces.”

Paul died August 17, 2024, after a brief period of in-home hospice, where he rested with a view of his verdant back yard, in the company of his wife and daughter.

Paul is predeceased by his daughter, Kathleen, who died of ovarian cancer in 2017, as well as his parents, Ralph and Evelyn, and brother Burton. He will be missed and remembered by countless friends, neighbors and relatives, including his dear wife Lydia and daughter Anne, his beloved older sister Martha, Burton’s widow Beth, numerous nieces and nephews, Kathleen’s widow Ashley Branch, his son-in-law Chris Shanley, and his two grandsons, Miles and Linus, whom he adored.

Paul was a true polymath, but also an innately kind, courteous and considerate human being. The world is a better place because of him.