After his combat valor, he was attacked by an enemy even more daunting than the Nazis he fought: bulbar polio, the most severe form of poliomyelitis. And he triumphed against that disease in a life that was filled with perseverance and courage.
A 1941 graduate of Germantown Academy, Mr. Snyder played football at Valley Forge Military Academy for one year before enlisting in the Army to fight in World War II. After Officer Candidate School, the second lieutenant shipped out with the 30th Infantry Division and served as a forward observer in major battles including the D-Day invasion and the Battle of the Bulge.
He was discharged in 1945 and enrolled in Temple University School of Pharmacy. He wanted to marry and assume his father's pharmacy on Stenton Avenue in East Mount Airy.
But in July 1948, Mr. Snyder went swimming at the Atlantic City Ritz-Carlton Hotel and awoke the next day paralyzed from the neck down. Gasping for air as the polio virus attacked the nerves that controlled his diaphragm, he was rushed to South Philadelphia and put in the last iron lung available in the Naval Hospital.
On Friday nights, he was visited by a pretty 17-year-old volunteer, Suzanne Udell from Olney High School.
Mr. Snyder later spent six months in an iron lung in Warm Springs, Ga., where President Franklin D. Roosevelt had established a polio rehabilitation center. The physical therapy in the 80-degree water helped him regain some use of his arms, though he would remain in a wheelchair. His spirits soared when he and two others had lunch with Eleanor Roosevelt.
In 1953, Mr. Snyder married Udell and finished pharmacy school. The couple raised two children in an apartment above Stenton Pharmacy, which he inherited from his father and ran until he retired in 1987. His wife died in 1994.
He was a longtime resident of Wyncote before moving to Florida in 2002. Mr. Snyder was not daunted by setbacks. "I have always been motivated to help people," he said while speaking to a 1994 Veterans Day audience in Cheltenham. "I thank God for America and for those who gave their lives so that we can be here today.
"The real heroes are those who did not make it through the war," Mr. Snyder said in 1994.
In retirement, Mr. Snyder volunteered at the Philadelphia Department of Public Assistance and the Montgomery County Board of Public Transportation. He was a member of the 520th chapter of the Jewish War Veterans, vice president of the Palm Beach Post Polio Association, and founder of the Delaware Valley Polio Survivors Association.
He is survived by a daughter, Eileen Kardon; his wife of five weeks, Alma Evans, who had been his caretaker since 2002; five grandsons; and a sister. His son, Barry, died in 2000.
Services were July 12, 2007.
Donations may be made to the Rosenfeld Cancer Center at Abington Memorial Hospital Foundation, 1200 Old York Rd., Abington, Pa. 19001. Gayle Ronan Sims, Philadelphia Inquirer - Philadelphia,PA,USA
Page last revised
04/02/2022