Remembering: Mathilde Schmidt
Mathilde Apelt Schmidt passed away peacefully last Tuesday, January 4. She was 100. The Castro Valley resident was surrounded by her surviving children: Leo H. Schmidt, Doris Michaels with her husband Charlie, and Barbara Cruz, and by her 96-year-old husband, Leo W. Schmidt via Facetime. The couple would have celebrated their 69th wedding anniversary on January 30th.
Schmidt is preceded in death by her son Marty who died along with his son Denali in 2013 while they attempted to be the first father and son team to summit K2, the second-highest mountain in the world. Mathilde is the grandmother of six and the great-grandmother of three.
There is an intimate gathering scheduled for the close family on Saturday, January 15. Anyone who would like to honor her long and fruitful life can donate to the Bear Valley Music Festival (bearvalleymusicfestival.org) in her honor.
Schmidt was a self-published author of five books, a former German teacher in Castro Valley who loved playing piano, gardening, and playing Scrabble. She was active in the CV German community, helped organize Oktoberfest celebrations, was a Rotarian, and volunteered at the Castro Valley Library.
She is best known for her guide for life: “Happiness a Matter of the Mind: Vantage point of an Octogenarian” (2008 by IUniverse)
“It’s all in my book, but achieving inner happiness is important,” Apelt Schmidt told the Castro Valley Forum last year. “Stay away from the enemies of happiness: stress, anger, jealousy, greed, lies, fear of the future, regrets of the past--all of the things you shouldn’t do. And then focus on the things you should do: empathy, think of others, stay active, and attain a positive attitude and keep it.”
Schmidt’s four other books include an autobiography “My Life on Two Continents” (2006) and two novels: “The Lake Dwellers” (2007) and “The Old Castle in Austria: Sins of the Fathers (2008). Her biography, “My Father, Hermann Apelt: The Legacy of a Great German Senator (2011) outlines how her father was instrumental in saving the shipping port in Bremen along the Weser River following WWI and WWII.
Born in Bremen, Germany in 1921, Schmidt studied agriculture, specifically cotton. During World War II, she was taken by the French and held as a POW until a prisoner exchange following the Battle of the Bulge in 1945.
Following WWII and six years of studying at Hamburg University, Mathilde traveled to America. Her oldest sister had married a German American in Dayton, Ohio. Mathilde was eager to do the same. In 1952, Mathilde landed in Lodi, California where she met her husband, Leo. The two were introduced by Leo’s sister and were married after a short courtship.
The couple moved to Castro Valley in 1963 where they raised four children who all went to Castro Valley Schools.