Rosel Hoffberger Schewel

With the death of Rosel Hoffberger Schewel on September 28, 2017, Lynchburg lost an extraordinary citizen—a philanthropist, teacher, scholar, mentor, political activist, founder, board leader, and a champion for public education, racial justice and the rights of women.

While Rosel reveled in her teaching and public service, her first and deepest commitment was always to her family and friends. She offered them boundless love and found a thousand ways, large and small, to express it.

Elliot Schewel courted Rosel—“Ro” to her friends and family—in the late 1940’s, meeting his Baltimore sweetheart after returning to Washington & Lee from his military service. One night at dinner she found an engagement ring at the bottom of her champagne glass and said “yes.” This was good fortune for Elliot and for Lynchburg.

Ro and El were married for 68 years. In the final days of her life, Rosel told Elliot, “We had a great run. We didn’t miss a thing.” And that was true. It is hard to imagine a marriage filled with more love, happiness and common purpose than the marriage of Ro and El.

What a life they lived! Steve, Mike and Susan had a childhood filled with their parents’ love and with Rosel’s close attention while Elliot made their living at Schewel Furniture Company. Their house on Gorman Drive was constantly full of children playing basketball or ping-pong or making art. The family spent two idyllic weeks every summer at Virginia Beach, and later at their house on Smith Mt. Lake. Ro and El loved to travel—first to Israel (five different times) and Europe and later in life to China, Russia, Japan, South Africa, Thailand, and many other countries.

Rosel’s love for her children was unconditional, but she also set high standards for them. She expected courtesy and good manners, and she made it clear that hard work, generosity and a commitment to social justice were expectations for everyone in the Schewel family.

When the children married, Rosel poured her love into their spouses, Lao, Priscilla and Lizzy, and when her grandchildren married, she enveloped Keri and Lauren Lee with the same warmth and devotion.

Rosel built the family’s life around the dinner table which she covered with her fabulous cooking. Prompt attendance at dinner was a requirement, and the table was filled with talk of friends, family, business and—endlessly—politics. Passover was the great annual ingathering, with as many as 40 family members around the long, long table loaded with crystal and candles and flowers, Rosel the magician who conjured up this enchanted evening dedicated to family and freedom.

But Rosel’s table accommodated more than family. Around her table legislative candidates got recruited, civic projects kicked off, organizations founded, funds raised, lifetime friendships forged.

Rosel especially encouraged the young. In the last decade of her life, she returned from every event with the same thought, “Elliot and I were the oldest people in the room.” She loved adopting young people—scholars, artists, crusaders for her favorite causes—and nurturing their success.

The young people who got the lion’s share of her encouragement, though, were her beloved grandchildren, Laura, Eli, Abe, Ben and Solly. She had the same high expectations for them that she did for her children, the same high ideals, and she showered these grandchildren with the same boundless love, the same awesome food, and family trips to Kenya and Yellowstone and the beach and especially Smith Mountain where everyone could be together in love.

While raising her family, Rosel went back to school for her graduate education and began her long career as an educator. She became a reading specialist, a special education teacher in the public schools and started Lynchburg’s first class for children with learning disabilities. She then moved to Lynchburg College where she became an Associate Professor of Education for 18 years, falling in with a group of exciting young scholars whose work she encouraged and who in turn led her to do her own scholarly work. Perhaps unique in American education, Rosel not only served on the faculty of the college but chaired its board of trustees as well. Both Rosel and Elliot had a deep commitment to Lynchburg College. Rosel was proud of the annual lecture established there in her name by Elliot and of the Rosel Schewel Distinguished Professorship established by her children and relatives, and she was especially proud of helping to get the School of Nursing started at the college.

On top of her professional career, Rosel’s civic involvement was almost unfathomable. Her high school yearbook bears this inscription beneath her photograph: “An iron fist in a velvet glove.” Rosel was unfailingly kind, but she could relentlessly drive an agenda. Nowhere was her iron fist more in evidence than in her first civic involvement in Lynchburg as a Girl Scout leader. As president of the local Girl Scout Council in the early 1950s, Rosel insisted that the new scout camp, Camp Sacajawea, allow black and white scouts equally to attend. Some board members resigned in protest, but Rosel persisted and succeeded. This was just the beginning of Rosel’s lifelong involvement in the struggle for equal justice for African-Americans.

Rosel’s specialty was founding and building institutions. At the end of her life, she said that her proudest achievements were helping to found the Lynchburg League of Women Voters in the early 1950’s, the Women’s Resource Center in the 1970’s, and Beacon of Hope in the 2010’s. Rosel was a feminist and proud of it. She sought out young women to support as candidates and leaders. Family lore has it that she once told her husband, Sen. Elliot Schewel, that she would leave him if he didn’t vote for the Equal Rights Amendment. It must have worked. He voted for the ERA and they remained married for several more decades. And when local women formed a group to recruit and fund women running for office, they named it “Rosel’s List.”

While El was in the state Senate for 20 years, Ro was the grassroots activist, a Democrat through and through. From Adlai Stevenson to Hillary Clinton, Ro worked tirelessly for Democratic candidates up and down the ticket.

Rosel was the first woman to serve on the board of Virginia Baptist Hospital, the first woman to serve on the board of Lynchburg College and the first woman to chair that board, the first woman to serve as president of Agudath Shalom Synagogue.

Rosel’s Judaism guided her life, and she was devoted to Agudath Shalom, following in the footsteps of her father-in-law, Abe Schewel, as the rock of the congregation for many, many years.

Age did not dim Rosel’s enthusiasm for life or for her causes. Just after her 81st birthday, she took Susan and Lizzy on a trip to India and struck a beautiful pose in front of the Taj Mahal. Also in her ninth decade she took up pottery to go along with her two book groups and her bridge game. The great cause of her final years was Beacon of Hope, the non-profit she cherished whose mission is to enable all of Lynchburg’s high school graduates to get a post-secondary education. She once wrote a fundraising letter for Beacon of Hope which exemplified this commitment: “I am an 85-year-old woman. I have been president of my synagogue, a Girl Scout leader, a professor. Now I am dedicating the rest of my life to Beacon of Hope and its mission.” And she did.

In her last days, Rosel talked to her family about death. Her most fervent belief was that we all live on in the lives of others we have touched. No one touched more lives than she did.

Rosel graduated from Hood College in 1949, got M.Ed. and Ed.S. degrees from Lynchburg College, and received an honorary doctorate along with Elliot from Lynchburg College in 2000.

She has received honors too numerous to mention and served on many boards ranging from the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts to the Lynchburg Racial Dialogue to the National Federation of Temple Sisterhoods.

Her civic involvement includes ten years as a Girl Scout troop leader and 20 years as a CASA volunteer. In addition to the college and synagogue, she chaired the following boards: Lynchburg Bicentennial Commission, Virginia Foundation for the Humanities and Public Policy, New Vistas School, Lynchburg Girl Scout Council, Women’s Resource Center.

Rosel Schewel is survived by her husband, Elliot Schewel; by her children, Steve and his spouse Lao Rubert, Michael and his spouse Priscilla Burbank, and Susan and her spouse Lizzy Schmidt; and her grandchildren, Laura Schewel, Elias Schewel, Abraham Schewel and his spouse Lauren Lee, Benjamin Schewel and his spouse Keri, and Solomon Schewel. She is also survived by a newborn great-grandson just born to Ben and Keri—Elliot Daniel Schewel.

Funeral services for Rosel will be conducted by Rabbi John Nimon at Agudath Shalom Synagogue at 11:00 am on Monday, October 2. There will be private family interment following the funeral service at Beth Joseph Agudath Shalom Cemetery.

The family will be observing the traditional Jewish period of mourning at 127 Westminster Way on Monday, October 2, and Tuesday, October 3, at 7:00 pm each night. Friends are invited to attend.

In lieu of flowers, Rosel requested donations be made in her name to Beacon of Hope, P.O. Box 1261, Lynchburg, Va. 24505.

Tharp Funeral Home & Crematory, Lynchburg, is assisting the family.