Steve Snyder-Rest In Peace

We met in 1984. I was thirty-five and Steve was twenty-eight. My cousin, Jack McAuliffe introduced us. I had been practicing law and my friend, Larry Kirwan, who would become the New York State Democratic party Chairman, had talked me into running Walter Mondale’s Presidential campaign in Central New York.

Steve was a native Syracusan, coming from a large family that lived in the Winkworth section of the City. He had graduated from Bishop Ludden High School, the University of Rochester and Syracuse University College of Law. He had been admitted to practice in New York and Florida where he’d spent a few years practicing law and involved in several statewide Democratic political campaigns. On election night 1984, Steve, Larry Hackett and I stood on the deck in the face of Mondale’s Titanic loss to Ronald Reagan and went down with the ship.

Out of that experience the three of us had formed a deep friendship. They would be with me throughout my two campaigns for Syracuse Board of Education, my unsuccessful 1993 Democratic Primary campaign for Mayor of Syracuse and my two campaigns for Onondaga County Court Judge. They were largely responsible for the successes and I was responsible for our one defeat.

During the 1980’s and 90’s we tried some criminal cases together. I learned that he had great courtroom poise and skills. He managed to be positive and upbeat no matter how dark the facts of the cases we were presented with and, indeed, some were pretty dark. He brought that same calm equanimity to all of his clients as his practice evolved into other areas and they confronted other kinds of life decisions such as buying homes, getting divorced and other kinds of life crisis.

Between campaigns we had a lot of fun. We spent a lot of time at my summer place on Wellesley Island and on Steve’s boat in Alexandria Bay. Nobody liked to have fun or was more fun to be with than Steve Snyder.

He was extraordinarily generous, providing whatever was needed to those who sought his help and never asked anything in return. If someone wronged or disappointed him, he was quick to forgive and forget without holding a grudge.

Women of all ages fell in love with him. When my two daughters were children, he showed up on Wellesley Island one summer day with his puppy “Wags” and asked them to play with the dog while we went off somewhere, a memory they carried with them this past week. When the romance ended in his various relationships he always remained close, loving and supportive of the other.

I don’t mean to suggest that he was perfect.

He wasn’t.

None of us are.

He was, however, one of the most good and decent people that God ever made.

As I learned of his passing I was reminded of a verse by the poet Sam Walter Foss;
“Let me live in a house by the side of the road
Where the race of men go by-
The men who are good and the men who are bad
As good and as bad as I
I would not sit in the scorner’s seat
Nor hurl the cynic’s ban-
Let me live in a house by the side of the road
And be a friend to man.”

That is the way he lived for an all too brief time.

We were blessed to know him and are much poorer for his passing.