Even when James Schmoyer stopped teaching to open an ice cream shop near Dorney Park, he continued to be a great mentor, according to the people who knew him \u2014 generous with his time and knowledge.<\/p>\n
Schmoyer, 82, founder of Ice Cream World in South Whitehall Township, died peacefully Sunday<\/a> in his Emmaus home, surrounded by family. Hundreds of people have expressed their condolences online<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s very nice and comforting, but it can be overwhelming too, to see how many people are reaching out,\u201d said Kim MacIver, Schmoyer\u2019s daughter.<\/p>\n Born in Allentown, Schmoyer graduated from Kutztown University with an education degree and taught for several years before he opened Ice Cream World in 1977.<\/p>\n It used to be a Carvel location that he purchased near the former King George Inn before he rebranded and moved it to its current location at 3512 Hamilton Blvd.<\/p>\n After Schmoyer retired, MacIver took over in 2008 alongside her husband Allen.<\/p>\n \u201cI know that a lot of people in our store here throughout the years have made a lot of their own family memories,\u201d she said. \u201cJust from visiting our shop, from coming in with their kids for ice cream, to buying their birthday cakes here every year, to a lot of people making it their family tradition to watch Dorney Park\u2019s fireworks from our parking lot and things like that. And he created all those possibilities with starting the store and making it such a nice, family atmosphere, as well as the impact he had on many of the young employees over the years that he worked with.\u201d<\/p>\n Schmoyer was a hard worker, MacIver said, who treated employees as students and taught them skills such as customer service. He enjoyed skiing and was a private pilot who would take family, friends and employees on plane rides.<\/p>\n As someone who also worked as a teacher for several years, MacIver said she applies his example to her own work.<\/p>\n \u201cHe enjoyed working with the young people, I do as well,\u201d she said. \u201cEncouraging them to go to college and teaching them some life skills and \u2026 it\u2019s nice to see them grow and learn and go on to bigger and better things from here.\u201d<\/p>\n Schmoyer\u2019s son, Eric Schmoyer, a software developer, said he enjoyed the days that he worked at Ice Cream World during his school years, starting around 10 years old. He never really considered anything else at the time \u2014 \u201cthat was the family business.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cBy the time I was in high school, I was always trying to just be another employee and not the boss\u2019s son,\u201d he said. \u201cI remember vividly one time when one of my co-workers finally put it together after she had been there a few months and goes, \u2018You\u2019re Big Jim\u2019s son!\u2019 And she looks at me and she says, \u2018You can\u2019t get fired!\u2019 And I kind of looked at her and I said, \u2018Yeah, but I can\u2019t quit either.\u2019 \u201c<\/p>\n Eric called his father a driven and encouraging individual, with a great sense of humor.<\/p>\n \u201cHe was always a role model,\u201d he said. \u201cFor me, he gave me my work ethic and how to run a business and things like that. Obviously he taught me to ski too, and I also am a pilot because of him. But I think that he encouraged anybody he met with to work hard and pursue their dreams. And that was, I think, apparent even when I started reading some of these comments about the people who he taught to do some of this stuff or \u2026 have their first job and learn about managing things or making change at the cash register or whatever. So yeah, in some ways, I think almost being a teacher was more important to him than running a business.\u201d<\/p>\n Ben Kohler, a retired commercial pilot, was one of those individuals whom Schmoyer had given their first job. He was 14 when he began working alongside him at Carvel and later at Ice Cream World, all the way through high school and in the summer during college.<\/p>\n They were close friends, Kohler said, enough to call Schmoyer an older brother. They even owned a plane together, a Piper PA-32 Cherokee Six.<\/p>\n \u201cHe obviously employed thousands and thousands of young kids like myself over the years that he ran the business,\u201d Kohler said. \u201cAnd I just think about him as being just a great teacher. He had the right amount of discipline and patience and \u2026 I don\u2019t even know how to describe it, belief in the individual or whatever, but he \u2026 I don\u2019t know. I enjoyed working for him. I enjoyed being his friend, and I thought he was just a fantastic teacher. He had a lot of patience. A lot of patience.\u201d<\/p>\n A celebration of life will take place at noon Sunday at Bachman, Kulik & Reinsmith Funeral Homes, 225 Elm St. in Emmaus.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Even when James Schmoyer stopped teaching to open an ice cream shop near Dorney Park, he continued to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":19094,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[153,155,154,60,433,182,139,11100,9790,28,435,436,664,289,432],"class_list":["post-19093","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-bethlehem","tag-bethlehem","tag-bethlehem-headlines","tag-bethlehem-news","tag-business","tag-lehigh-county","tag-local-news","tag-news","tag-news-obituaries","tag-parkland-area","tag-pennsylvania","tag-restaurants-food-and-drink","tag-retail","tag-south-whitehall-township","tag-things-to-do","tag-top-stories-tmc"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19093","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19093"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19093\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/19094"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19093"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19093"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19093"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}