Zagreb, Croatia

Sept. 16, 1922 — Nov. 22, 2016

Richard “Dick” Schultz was born to mother Frances Mattson, the daughter of immigrant Swedes, and father Richard Samuel Schultz, a refugee farmer from the Ukraine. He grew up in the Depression, spending every summer in Gearhart, caddying at the golf course for 35 cents a round plus a 10 cent tip, and roaming the woods dunes, and beaches barefoot with his .22 rifle, his dog, Fritz, and his buddies Gene and Boyd Poppino. The three were amazed at the Clatsop open graves at the Neacoxie, which they considered a sacred place.

He learned how to golf on the Gearhart Golf Course by playing holes 15 to 17 at twilight, over and over until dark. The family stayed first in a Habicost cabin, then at the Habicost house, a converted wing of the old Gearhart Hotel that was salvaged after the burn. His dog, Fritz, died and still lies buried at the Habicost fence line at the Ridge Path. He attended Washington High School in Portland where he met the love of his life, Jeanne Briggs, and they were inseparable for the next 78 years, 71 in marriage.

The day after Pearl Harbor, his sophomore year in the Theta Chi house at the University of Oregon, he enlisted in the U.S. Navy, where he trained to fly PBY Catalinas in submarine warfare against German U-boats along the Gulf and east coasts, and was a noted stunt fl-er, irritating his superiors, in the skies over Florida and Georgia.

After earning his wings, he and Jeanne were married in Portland. He requested a transfer to the South Pacific, where he longed to fly the lean Grummond TBF Avenger, but as the war wound down he was assigned to teach instrument navigation in Pensacola, Florida, until the Japanese surrender.

Dick and Jeanne returned to Oregon and bought a house on the Gearhart beachfront for $3,750, lived there one winter with sand blowing through the walls, keeping warm by driftwood fires with their dog, Amber. Deciding they could not live on beach air and razor clams, they moved to Eugene where he earned a master’s degree in American literature at the University of Oregon, spending summers as the golf pro in Gearhart.

The year 1947 was a highlight of his golfing career, when he beat long-standing champ Ralph Dichter at the Gearhart Golf Course Club Championship, at the second hole of a sudden death playoff, which Dichter double-bogeyed. After earning his degree, Dick taught high school English in Bend for several years, renting a different house each year and vacating it for the summer holiday in Gearhart, where he continued to work as the golf pro.

Weary of teaching high school, because “the orders don’t come from the bottom up,” Dick moved back to Portland where he took a desk job at ESCO and then Hyster, taking the “daddy train” on summer weekends into Gearhart, where he was a regular at the Sandtrap and Gearhart Hotel, and befriended many Gearhart regulars, including the actor Johnny Sheffield of Tarzan fame, and screenwriter Beau Stone, from whom he made a small fortune in golfing and chess bets.

He golfed, dug clams, hooked salmon, and with Jeanne, socialized with Roy and June Maden, Pat and Tom Livesley, Brian and Sheila Taylor, Jon Blissett, Ray and Jeanne Weston, Harry McCall, Dave and Emmadine MacDonald, and many others, and was a generous regular at the blackjack table at the Fireman’s Ball.

He soon tired of pushing papers and returned to U of O to enter a doctoral program in classical Greek, but his advisor died halfway through, so he finished with a second master’s in Greek drama. He then went on to be the first lecturer in classics at Portland State University, teaching Shakespeare and American literature on the side.

A bibliophile collector of first editions, his immense knowledge of literature inspired that sharp and wicked wit that endeared him to many, unless they were on the wrong end of it.

Dick never lost the connection to Gearhart, where he claimed to have spent the best times of his life. In the early 1970s, he grieved to see the Gearhart Hotel razed, but managed to salvage a “Driftwood Lounge” sign for his den, and channeled his anger to win the Gearhart Grandfathers’ Golf Tournament, matching the Gearhart course record on the back nine.

In the 1990s he was instrumental in stopping the Sahhalie condominium development at the Neacoxie estuary in Seaside by testifying on the desecration of the Indian gravesites there that he knew from childhood.

He was a lifelong athlete, a gymnast in high school and college, and completed two Seaside marathons in his 50s. He was in retirement for 30 years, traveling throughout the U.S. and Europe. He died two months after his 94th birthday, and six months after his 71st wedding anniversary, while enjoying a life of leisure on the Croatian Adriatic coast with Jeanne and two of his children, Stewart and Julie, who are residents in Croatia.

Dick will be remembered as a brash, freewheeling and irreverent member of the Greatest Generation, a lover and promoter of classical literature and ideas, a natural golfer with nerves of steel, a friend and protector of old Gearhart, and a devoted father and husband who was convinced each of his children was destined for greatness.

He is survived by his wife, Jeanne; brother Bill; children Julie, Stewart and Todd; grandchildren Rick, Erin, Adrienne, Henry and Annegret; step-grandchildren Jennifer and Matthew; and several great-grandchildren, nieces and nephews. His eldest son Rick, volunteer Gearhart fireman, classified ad manager at The Daily Astorian and champion golfer, preceded him in death.