Leonard Schmidt

July 2023

Leonard Schmidt has stories to tell. The soon-to-be 89-year-old grew up in Bellevue, Iowa, where he and wife Shirley married in 1955. They raised seven kids together, lived in Cedar Rapids for twelve years, and moved to Oregon in 1986. In 2019 they came to West Des Moines to be closer to family, and Leonard started coming to Mass at Sacred Heart.

In Oregon, Leonard and Shirley belonged to a small parish where the youth minister convinced Leonard to help out with Religious Education. Leonard started out as a “floater,” filling in wherever a teacher was missing. “I’d just kind of bounce around,” he says. “I didn’t do so much teaching as talking about God and talking about prayer. I was always pushing prayer on them.”

One evening, Leonard filled in for the second-grade teacher, and he decided to tell the students some stories about his prayer life. “I started out telling them about when I was a little boy and I wanted a bicycle.” He told them that even though his Dad couldn’t afford a bicycle, he kept praying for three long years.

“Finally, I got my bicycle,” he concluded.

This got their attention—with one exception. “There was one little guy in there, he wouldn’t stay in his chair. He was all over and he was pestering everybody.” Leonard decided to focus on the kids who were listening, telling them stories about the times he prayed for things to go well in school, for his marriage to be long and happy, for help when he lost his job, and for his kids to get better when they were sick. The students couldn’t get enough of Leonard’s stories.

The following week, the regular teacher returned and Leonard stopped by to say hello. When she asked him to re-tell a story or two, he obliged—but this time, with help from the kids. At one point, he had just finished a story when the boy who wouldn’t stay in his chair popped up. “You forgot something,” the boy insisted. “When you told us that story last week, you mentioned your wife!” Leonard says this taught him never to underestimate the kid who isn’t paying attention, because he might surprise you. “I never forgot that little rascal,” he says.

Leonard has countless other stories to share, and If you bump into him after Mass, you might ask him about all the fun he had teaching his kindergarteners about God, or the year he spent training his fourth graders to pray the Rosary together. Leonard loved teaching Religious Ed and says it affected him tremendously. “It refreshed me. I think it done me as much good as it did the kids.”