Sharing a bond to the end

Cancer patient strikes accord with volunteer driver

June 23, 2009

Albert Hill drives patients who need rides to hospitals for the state Medicaid transportation program.

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The dying man changed Al Hill's life. He changed Hill's perspective and outlook, changed the way he looks at his wife, his kids, his garden out back.

Then Joseph Schneiderat lost his battle with esophageal cancer. He died last month, and Hill, for one, will always remember that his friend passed away on Memorial Day.

"He touched my spirit," Hill said this week at his home in Salisbury.

The men met through the state's Medicaid program. Hill, 46, volunteered to pick up Schneiderat at his small Franklin apartment and drive him to various hospitals for treatment.

Now Hill wants you to know that Schneiderat, who had little in life, was strong and funny and

courageous and stubborn.

Hill also wants you to know how appreciative he is to have a pretty wife and a home and four cats. Sure, he's on disability because of arthritis, and his wife, Wendi, was laid off last fall. Wendi, who's 44, is now

studying accounting at Hesser College. Hill is driving sick people to their doctors and receiving his own treatment - call it therapy - at the same time.

"The resilience of the human spirit is phenomenal," Hill said.

The bond between Hill and Schneiderat grew quickly. They shared their experiences, life's rough spots, on the way to chemo, in Hill's 2000 Buick Regal. Too bad it lasted less than a year.

"He was like me, like us," Hill said, nodding his head toward Wendi across the kitchen bar. "You knew where you stood with Joe."

Schneiderat died at age 48. He lived with his girlfriend, Lisa Adams, and her two sons, ages 15 and 10.

He was estranged from his former wife and their two children. This always bothered Schneiderat, so he drank beer to forget. He had trouble with the law, arrests for drunken driving and drinking in public at White Park.

But Schneiderat could fix boilers and rewire houses with the best of them. He'd also look you square in the eye and tell you exactly what he was thinking.

No sugarcoating. No cushion to soften the blow. Just a tornado, surging forward with expletives and honesty and very little tact.

"If you ask your man how you look in a shirt, he's supposed to say, 'Great,' " Adams said. "He'd say that you look humongous. You held your breath with him and hoped his words wouldn't be so bad."

Hill, though, felt a connection. He saw a man whose mother had drunk herself to death. He saw a man who had his own drinking problem. He saw a man who had been adopted. And he saw a man who, beneath a gruff exterior, beyond the rough edges, had a big heart.

He saw a shade of himself.

"I was in trouble since I was 17," said Hill, who quit drinking in 1987. "We really touched base in the spiritual arena. We were so similar."

Hill can thank his wife for launching this rewarding section of his life. Wendi saw a blurb last summer in the Monitor, a plea for help.

Schneiderat needed a ride, and Hill needed a sense of purpose, a distraction. A licensed practical nurse for 23 years, he was on disability for advanced arthritis. He was depressed.

"I wasn't feeling as positive about life as I usually can be," Hill said.

Wendi added, "This was something he could do that wouldn't take a whole lot of effort and energy. There would be energy emotionally, because I know that no matter who he meets, he's going to become emotionally attached."

They liked each other quickly, sharing a straightforward, no-nonsense attitude. "Irish, stubborn wiseasses," was Adams's explanation for the friendship.

"Once they opened up to each other, they just clicked," she added. "As they started this, they found out they had more in common than they thought."

Hill drove his friend to Concord Hospital for radiation, to Franklin Regional Hospital for chemotherapy and medication, and to Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center in Lebanon to visit his primary care physician. (next page »)