Diane Jacobus and Eleanor Schmidt, two of Long Beach’s extraordinary community leaders whose paths crossed on the issue of literacy and support for the city’s extensive library system, died recently — within a day of each other.
Jacobus, who also was chief of staff and senior adviser to former Mayor Beverly O’Neill and protocol officer for the Port of Long Beach, died April 5 of natural causes in Boulder, Colorado, where she had moved to be closer to her family. She was 91.
Schmidt, former director of Long Beach Library Services, died at her home in Long Beach on April 6 after struggling with Parkinson’s disease for several years. She was 83.
Eleanor Schmidt. (Courtesy)
Diane Jacobus holds a photo of her late father, Lt. Cmdr. Ernest Wade, at the Navy Memorial in Long Beach on Thursday, May 23, 2019. Wade was killed in World War II while he was a Japanese prisoner. (Photo by Scott Varley, Daily Breeze/SCNG)
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Eleanor Schmidt. (Courtesy)
“It is with great sadness that I share the news of the passing of Eleanor and Diane within hours of each other,” said Veronica Garcia Davalos, executive director and CEO of the Foundation, “making this an incredibly difficult week for our Long Beach Public Library Foundation.”
Schmidt was a champion for the city’s libraries from the time she came to Long Beach as manager of the Main Library in 1989 and retired in 2008 as director of library services, Davalos said.
“During her tenure, she fought for library funding, helped open the Mark Twain Library and navigated difficult budget cuts with creativity and determination,” Davalos said. “Most notably, she found money-saving alternatives that kept the Main Library open when closure seemed imminent, rallying the community around a cause she deeply believed in.”
Schmidt also was a strong supporter of the Library Foundation, which was founded in 1996, Davalos said. That’s when Jacobus and Schmidt worked closely together.
“Diane was there at the beginning as a founding member of our Library Foundation,” Davalos said. At the time, Jacobus also was intensively active as senior adviser to O’Neill.
“But Diane did not simply lend her name to a cause,” Davalos said. “She gave her heart, her vision and her tireless energy to building something she believed in deeply. She saw what this organization could become long before the rest of us could, and she worked with quiet determination to make it real.”
Jacobus and Schmidt also were good friends.
“Eleanor had a passion for gardening,” said Cordelia Howard, former Library Services director before Schmidt. “She formed a group of friends, including Jacobus, called them ‘Garden Friends’ and would have a big annual lunch with them in her beautiful garden.”
As she fought Parkinson’s disease, Schmidt had her bed placed facing a window so she could look out at her garden, Howard said.
Jacobus and Schmidt were also both avid readers and called each other and their book club friends, “The Bookies,” Howard said.
Celebration of life memorials are being planned for Schmidt and Jacobus.
Eleanor Schmidt
Eleanor Louise Schmidt (née Miller) was born in 1942 in Little Falls, New York, and met her husband, Peter Schmidt, while attending Syracuse University. They moved to Southern California when her husband got a professorship at UCLA and she went to library school at USC. Eleanor Schmidt then worked at the Los Angeles Public Library system before taking her position as director of Long Beach’s Main Library in 1989.
In 2007, Schmidt oversaw the opening of the Mark Twain library branch, the city’s first new library in more than 30 years. It was state-of-the-art and doubled in size from the original Twain library.
Located on Anaheim Street in the middle of Cambodia town, it included books in Khmer, Spanish and Vietnamese. More than 800 people attended the grand opening with then Mayor Bob Foster and O’Neill cutting the ceremonial ribbon.
Schmidt turned 65 shortly after the opening and was seriously considering retiring so she could spend more time traveling with her retired husband. But a major fiscal crisis in the city budget postponed her plans for a year when it was proposed that the Main Library located at the Civic Center on Ocean Boulevard be closed as a cost-cutting measure.
In addition, the city had no funds to fix the downtown library’s leaky roof and mold issues or bring the building, which opened in 1977, up to seismic code. Schmidt became a silent leader in the campaign to keep the Main Library open by rounding up support in the community.
“I just felt that with everything that was happening, I couldn’t step down in the middle of everything,” Schmidt said at the time. “I had to see it through.”
The organized public protest was successful in shelving those plans and Schmidt was finally able to retire in 2008.
“I’ve had an absolutely amazing career,” Schmidt said. “I didn’t expect to end on quite the note that it did. I expected it to be a little quieter.”
That 1977 location that Schmidt was able to keep open has since been replaced with the new Billie Jean King Main Library, which opened in 2019 at the corner of Broadway and Pacific Avenue.
Diane Jacobus
Diane Jacobus (née Wade) was born in 1935 in Eureka. In a heartbreaking story in the Press-Telegram in 2007, Jacobus talked about the love of her father when she was 6 years old and he sent her postcards from China, months before the start of World War II.
“How is my big little girl?” Lt. Cmdr. Ernest Marion Wade, a Navy doctor, wrote to his daughter from Shanghai. Diane and her family had moved to Shanghai to be with her father, but their time there was short-lived when American military dependents were ordered to leave China.
Wade never returned home. Captured in the Philippines, where he had been transferred early in the war, Wade died under horrific conditions aboard a Japanese ship carrying him and other prisoners of war to Japan in 1945. He died aboard that ship from wounds and malnutrition.
Jacobus told her father’s story as part of the Veterans History Project, which Congress created to preserve remembrances of wars from veterans and their relatives.
“My father was a man of great courage who gave his life so that others might live,” she said. “He will always be my hero, as will all of those who fought for our freedoms, whether they returned or not.” The Navy Memorial monument sphere at Pierpoint Landing near the Aquarium of the Pacific includes a photo of her father.
Jacobus was actively involved in the Long Beach Gold Star Manor as its board president, and as a liaison between the board and the Manor’s Gold Star mothers and families.
When her family returned to Long Beach from China, Jacobus’ mother, Helen, worked in the Long Beach Naval Shipyard.
Jacobus graduated from Wilson High School and began a series of jobs, including editorial work on a suburban newspaper, office manager in a dental office and bookstore manager.
Jacobus met Beverley O’Neill when the latter was working at Long Beach City College. When O’Neill decided to run for mayor in 1994 and won, she selected Jacobus as her chief of staff and senior adviser.
O’Neill, the first woman elected by voters as Long Beach mayor, served for three terms, or 12 years, the last term as a write-in candidate. Jacobus was O’Neill’s campaign manager for that successful write-in third term.
Jacobus then went to the Port of Long Beach as its protocol officer, handling diplomatic relations and cross-cultural communications. She was also active with the Sister Cities of Long Beach organization, especially the Long Beach-Qingdao Association.
“Long Beach has lost two important people who meant so much to our city,” said Margaret Durning, one of the founders of the Library Foundation.