Glacier National Park, MT : Prominent lawyer, ex-councilman dies in Montana bicycle crash o early Sunday morning July 27th 2014

Daniel Schoedinger, a 40-year corporate attorney and a former two-term member of the Columbus City Council, died in a bicycle crash while descending a mountain road near Glacier National Park in Montana over the weekend.

Schoedinger was a 1962 graduate of Bexley High School who studied law at the University of Denver and worked as a law clerk for Ohio Chief Justice C. William O’Neill before running as a Republican for Columbus City Council in 1971. He won and was re-elected in 1975, then retired from politics after that term to focus on his law practice as a partner with Vorys, Sater, Seymour & Pease.

“He loved the outdoors in every capacity and loved out West,” said Christy Rosenthal, the oldest of Schoedinger’s three children. His other children are Tara Schoedinger and Arrin Schoedinger.

Schoedinger, 69, rediscovered cycling later in his life and rode across the country a few years ago as part of a fundraiser.

Around 1 p.m. on Sunday, Schoedinger was riding on a mountain road that descends from Whitefish Mountain Resort when he crashed, said Montana Highway Patrol Trooper Laramie Stefani, who investigated.

“He was coming down, applied his brakes,” Stefani said.

No one has come forward to say they saw the crash, but police are investigating whether a car or other vehicle contributed to it, Stefani said.

Schoedinger was a part-time resident of Whitefish, Mont., which is a few miles from Glacier, near the Canadian border. He was about 10 miles from his house when the crash happened, Stefani said.

Schoedinger remarried several years ago, to Diane Bennett, who was the longtime chief executive officer of Action for Children in Columbus, and in 2011 he completed a coast-to-coast bike ride to raise money for her agency.

“When I thought about doing this coast-to-coast tour, I knew I wanted to also honor the woman I love and her lifelong work on behalf of our community’s children by raising money for Action for Children,” Schoedinger wrote on a fundraising website.

While running for the council in the early 1970s, Schoedinger and a group of “young and brash” GOP volunteers descended on the Statehouse with lawn mowers to cut the grass, which had been neglected due to a state-budget shortfall, John W. Hoberg said.

Hoberg, also a retired Vorys partner, helped run Schoedinger’s council campaigns. Another campaign manager was a young Dana G. “Buck” Rinehart, who would go on to become mayor of Columbus — a post that Schoedinger at one time considered pursuing.

No guards stopped the grass-cutting stunt, and “we learned how immense the Statehouse lawn was,” Hoberg said. “I don’t recall seeing a guard, personally, that day.”

But voters loved it, and Schoedinger got more votes than another other candidate running that year, Hoberg said.

Former Columbus City Councilwoman Fran Ryan, 80, served on the council with Schoedinger, and “ even though we were on opposite sides of the aisle, we were absolutely good friends,” she said.

“He cared for the city.”

Source :
Daniel Schoedinger | 1944-2014: Prominent lawyer, ex-councilman dies in Montana bicycle crash