Author: Buttons

An Emeritus Member We All Shall Miss

1923-2013

The Life and Times of Ted Schulz

Now and then–but rarely–one is privileged to have passed this way and known a true gentleman and wondrous person. These are the ornaments of a life, and they come to us spontaneously and with little fanfare. They are ethereal in their goodness and perfection; one knows instinctively that one is in the company of a Higher Spirit. Such a person was Ted Schulz who returned to the The Reichanbach Falls on January, 24, 2013, and we believe did so with joy in his sight, as he would be meeting his dear Mary in the mist of the Falls they both loved so much.

Col. Ted Schulz in his own words:

“I have lived a good life, you might say a charmed life. Married to the beautiful, gracious Mary Chizuko Iwaki for 54 years. She was a pharmacist, I a soldier. We achieved modest success in life. Mary was Chief Pharmacist at a large California hospital, I got to be a Colonel in the U.S. Army.

I was born in San Francisco at Mt. Zion Hospital on June 2, 1923 of William John Schulz and Marie Hortense Grandi. I have only one sibling, a younger sister, Wilma Horwitz. She is a widow and lives in Orinda. My parents lived in a pair of flats at 2332 and 2234 Divisadero St., in The City. My father’s mother “Grandma” and my father’s sister “Louise” aka “Aunt Lou” lived in the upstairs flat. In addition to Aunt Lou, my Dad had a younger brother, Fred. Fred was married to Audry, who was a “Schultz” before she became a “Schulz”

My parents loved me and protected me and my sister. During the “Great Depression” I never missed a meal or didn’t have a bed to sleep in. I was completely unaware that those were “hard times.”

*    *    *    *

Ted was a ray of sunshine. A realist and a deep thinker, he has collected many Sherlock Holmes collectibles. He read Sherlock Holmes and was a widely-regarded Canonical expert. He referred to himself, with his unfailing graciousness, as an “enthusiast.”

His catalog of Sherlock Holmes books, magazines, pamphlets and ephemera listing over 1,000 items offered to collectors in the 1990s is a collectible itself. He was long a member of the Baker Street Irregulars, invested by Julian Wolff in 1961 as “The Amateur Mendicant Society.” He belonged to San Francisco’s scion, The Scowerers and the Molly Maguires and the Persian Slipper Society. He was a loyal member of the scion club, The Napa Valley Napoleons of S.H. He had belonged to The Illustrious Clients of Indianapolis, and ran the famous “221B Detachment” of the Soldiers of Baker Street (The S.O.B.’s), more familiarly known as “The Flying Squad” while stationed in Washington, D.C. On his twenty-fifth anniversary of the BSI, he was duly recognized and honoured with the Two-Shilling Award.

Along the way, John Ruyle, BSI “Baron Dawson” wrote a poem about Ted Schulz and Watson:

Ted Schulz and Watson

Between Ted Schulz and Watson
there is little to choose.
They’re both trusty comrades
who are always of use.

Yes, Teddy and John,
the sound is melodious.
This is a case where
comparisons are not odious.

Both are old soldiers
who stalked down their quarry,
And both found a treasure
in a wife named Mary.

Both have a humor
which is frequently pawky:
Ted’s son’s “William Sherlock,”
Fondly called “Shocky.”

Ted like Watson is loyal
and you can’t circumvent him.
If he didn’t exist,
we’d have to invent him!

*    *    *    *

Ted was also an enthusiast of August Derlith’s Solar Pons stories. With his usual enthusiasm, he rose to become The Lord High Warden of the Pontine Marshes, the Solar Pons Scociety and did much to further the aims of this distinguished group.

Tributes by John H Watson Society Members

There have been many who have honoured Ted Schulz with their reminiscenses and memories, and several from our own John H Watson Founding and Charter Members provide us with a view of the high regard Ted Schulz engendered in everyone he met during his fascinating and interesting life: (These are from the catalogue showcasing Ted’s book collection prepared by Mr. Vincent Brosnan in the late 1990s.)

Peter Blau, BSI “Black Peter,” JHWS “Curly”

It’s been forty-one years, actually, since I first met Ted Schulz, in the same place I’ve met many other Sherlockians: in the pages of The Baker Street Journal. Ted was in the U.S. Army in Japan in the 1950s, when I was briefly in Japan in the U.S. Navy, but neither of us knew the other was there. In fact, neither of us knew of any Sherlockians, Japanese or American, in Japan at that time. I returned to the United States in July 1956, but he stayed out in Japan for another year.
And Ted was more enterprising than I had been: he went to a Japanese bookstore in search of translations of the Canon, and he found one: Mei Tantei Homuzu (with The Hound of the Baskervilles and “The Red-Headed League”), and he bought not just one copy, but rather a hundred of them, and he wrote to Edgar W. Smith about his discovery, and offered the books to his fellow Sherlockians, in the October 1957 issue of The Baker Street Journal, at cost: $1.00 each.
That was the first Japanese translation to find its way into my modest Sherlockian collection (all Sherlockian collections were modest in those long-ago days, of course, because there wasn’t all that much Sherlockiana to collect). It was a wonderful introduction to Ted, of course; we began a correspondence, and soon we were able to meet, what with both of us being members of the same late-50s-early-60s Sherlockian generation, and we have been friends ever since, and we’ve met often, most recently in New York this year when he proudly watched his wife Mary toasted as “The Woman” at the cocktail party before the annual dinner of the Baker Street Irregulars.
The room was full of Ted and Mary’s friends, because they have so many of them acquired over the decades, and treasured. It is the friendships formed over the decades that have made the Sherlockian world so much fun for us, and I’m looking forward to seeing some of the other stories told by other friends in this well-deserved tribute.

Peter Blau

Michael Kean, BSI “General Charles Gordon,” JHWS “Toby”

A tribute that even begins to capture the generosity of Ted Schulz would take all of the pages of this catalogue; his heart is truly that big. There are few people as caring and considerate as Ted, and I’m blessed to be one of those individuals who has experienced it firsthand.
I met Ted at one of my first BSI dinners in the late 70s, and when some years later we again crossed paths, and I told him of the Kean family’s planned move to the Monterey Peninsula, he was delighted. It was through Ted that I received invitations to the Scowrers meetings and becmae part of the Persian Slipper Club. It was Ted who, over a dozen years ago, helped this enthusiastic amateur collector fully appreciate the magic of spending time together in a Sherlockian library.
The Kean family has visited the Schulz’s home on numerous occasions, and I’m happy to say, Ted and Mary have often returned the favor of visiting our home and The Diogenes Club. I recall a July 4th weekend visit to Marin when our children Megan and Adam were both quite young, and how patient and genuinely loving Ted was. I think he took special delight in knowing that someone else had also gifted his son with a Canonical name.
In this day and age it may not be fashionable to use the term “sweet” when referring to a man, but it readily applies to Ted Schulz, as does generous, caring and enthusiastic. But the term I value the most when describing Ted is “friend.”
Thank you, Ted.
Michael Kean

Bruce Parker, BSI “A Garroter by Trade,” JHWS “Oxford”

Ted and I first met at a meeting of the Scowrers and Molly Maguires in San Francisco shortly after I moved to Californina. Although I had known Sherlockians most of my life, I had never met anyone as enthusiastic as Ted. The beauty of Ted, of course, is that he is as enthusiastic about life in general as he is about Holmes in particular. When it comes to relieving a down mood, Ted is better than Prozac.
By the early 1980s he and I, prodded by our wives, decided that we had to dispose of some books from our overly-loaded libraries. It seemed that it would be more fun to sell at book fairs or through the mail than to just dispose of them through established dealers. We registered with the State of California, had business cards and bookmarks designed by Laura Parker, and went to our first fair at Dominican College in Marin County. The turnout was modest, the sales poor, but Ted made friends with every dealer present. Our next venture was a book fair at Stanford University. The crowds were excellent, the selling brisk, and it looked like we had a going concern. Ted, however, showed his true colors as a bookman. Periodically he would leave me in charge of the booth while he went out to greet other dealers. Unfortunately for the bottom line, he invariably returned with more books than we sold! Parker and Schulz, book dealers, met an early demise after the Stanford Book Fair.
I have been privileged to meet many wonderful people in my life but none so genuinely human as Ted Schulz. As Sherlockian collector, husband, father, grandfather, teacher, and friend, he sets a standard few of us can ever hope to match. Ted’s book collection has been a source of pride to him for years. Those people wise enough to purchase one of his books will receive not just another book, but one that was always treated with love and respect by one of the most decent human beings God ever created.

Bruce Parker

Don Yates, BSI “The Greek Interpreter,” JHWS “Pal”

When Joanne and I moved to California from MIchigan in 1982, I recall that we enjoyed no welcome more immediate and cordial than the warm reception accorded to us–as relocating Sherlockians–by Ted Schulz, of nearby San Rafael. Someone in the BSI had alerted Ted to our plans and he was promptly on the phone to us in Calistoga, making us feel like visiting royalty. This was especially important at the time because we were not yet sure that our rose-colored determination to pursue our lives in California was feasible or merely foolish. Ted really did make us feel at home out here and, in the end, we were able to make our hoome in our chosen Napa Valley–within hailing distance of other eventual west-coast pals whom Ted introduced us to: Laura Parker, Ray and Grets De Groat, Bob Steele, Bruce and Nan Parker, to name but a few of these “kinspirits” as Ted is wont to call them.
Ted, who was awarded a noble investiture, “The Amateur Mendicant Society” (my very first exposure to scion activities was with the Amateur Mendicant Society of Detroit), has probably performed more yoeman service in the interest of the BSI and Sherlockain studies in general than anyone else in the American west. Others will surely invoke Ted as an archivist, as a collector, an information center, and as a cohesive force who has for years kept the memory of Sherlock Holmes alive and thriving in this part of the world. But I want to stress here especially the unswerving friendship and inexhaustible hospitality that he, together with Mary, have treated so many of us to for so long, in the essential and characteristic spirit of Baker Street Irregulars conviviality.

Don Yates

*    *    *    *

Ted served in the armed forces for a long time; World War II, the Korean War, and the Vietnam War. during the war. He became a Regular Army officer, and retired as a Colonel. He thought himself fortunate that he never came under direct fire, and that he never fired a shot in anger.

Ted’s John H Watson Society moniker, “Captain” is not a military reference, rather the name of a loyal and faithful dog who visited his master’s grave every day until he himself passed on. Such was the pure loyalty, steadfastness and devotion of Ted Schulz.

Perhaps Ted’s summary best expresses his gentle life: “I’m a most fortunate fellow! I was born healthy, I married very well (I married “up”), I have (am blessed with) two fine children.”

When one comes to The Reichenbach Falls, turns and looks back for a moment, there can be no satisfaction greater than having lived a life as full, loving, kind and gracious as that attested to by these good friends and fellow Sherlockians. And so, we celebrate a Life in the Limelight, a good and meaningful life. Please stand and raise your glass and give a final toast to “Ted Schulz, Sherlockian, Kind and Good Human “KinSpirit.””