Jan. 4, 2009 — Local poet and author Richard Schrader has worked hard to share what he has seen and felt about St. Croix, filling 20 self-published books with poetry and prose inspired by life on the big island.
"First and foremost, the St. Croix — with its old folkways — that I knew as a young man is fading, and I want to preserve it in stories," Schrader says.
Schrader hasn't always been a writer. In 1984 he was studying in the library at the University of the Virgin Islands when friend and local poet Marty Campbell invited him to a poetry reading. Schrader's first thought was that poetry was not for him. But he went to the reading and liked what he heard.
"That was the beginning, and I started then to put down my thoughts," Schrader says.
Those thoughts are about the sea, clouds, flowers, trees, local people, culture and much more.
"Writing poetry was a new life for me," Schrader says. "I'm inspired by what I see and feel. I just feel it and put it down in writing. I always have paper in my pocket."
His first poem, "Stars," was an inspiration he had while camped on Blue Mountain during a National Guard exercise. He looked up and saw the stars in the clear night sky and looked down and saw the lights of St. Croix.
"I sit in the stillness of night gazing into the star-studded night," the poem begins.
Schrader says his son, Richard Jr., who he calls Richie, was always writing things on scraps and pieces of paper. He told him, "Richie you are going to lose those," which made the elder Schrader decide to put his wittings into a simple booklet form. He called it A Sharing of My Thoughts.
Home Sweet Home was his first published book of poetry. His poems contain simple yet elegant descriptive writing. After his mother passed, he sat in her rocking chair and created a poem in her memory.
During a recent interview with the Source, Schrader read his works aloud in a clear, deep, resonant voice. He has done poetry readings at the Emancipation Day Tea and for literary events at UVI. He does readings for schoolchildren and Memorial Day ceremonies for an organization he belongs to, the American Legion.
Schrader is dedicated to whatever he does, be it writing, the military, higher education or being a warden.
He was born on St. Croix in 1935 to Hezekiah and Veronika Schrader. His fondest memory from boyhood is wearing his older bother Donald's army hat and riding on a broomstick, pretending to be a soldier. His brother going in the military influenced Schrader so much that he tried to enlist in his early teens. He was selected to join the Army in 1951.
"You could imagine the joy when I went to the post office and got the letter saying, 'You have been selected to report for duty,'" Schrader says. He wanted to go to Korea with his buddies and get in the action of the Korean Conflict, but instead got sent to Germany as a rifleman in the infantry. He served for six years.
After the service he moved to New York City, where he had hoped to become a police officer. But a job came up in the New York Bureau of Corrections, and he worked there two years. Schrader came back to St. Croix in 1964 and worked for the Department of Safety as the first license-enforcement officer (now a part of the Department of Licensing and Consumer Affairs). In 1965, Schrader got a job with St. Croix's adult prison system at Richmond Penitentiary, where he worked his way up to the position of warden.
He didn't talk much about the time he spent working as a warden at the prison, where he retired in 1985. Schrader says he instituted programs and believed strongly in rehabilitation.
He took police science courses at Brooklyn Community College, and earned the very first associate degree in police science and administration at the then-College of the Virgin Islands. He took a work leave and, in 1971, earned his bachelor's degree in criminal justice at John Jay College in New York. Schrader also traveled to Denmark on a George C. Marshall Scholarship to study that country's prison system. In 1981 he earned a master's degree in education, supervision and administration at the University of the Virgin Islands.
Schrader has been married to his wife, Claudette, since 1959, and they have five children. He is active as a reader in his church, St. Ann's, and enjoys singing. He has received numerous art, cultural and humanities awards from past governors, senators, the V.I.-Puerto Rico Friendship Committee and Delegate Donna M. Christensen.
Since retirement, Schrader has kept busy with his writing and selling his books at shows and events on St. Croix. He vends at the Crucian Christmas Festival Food Fair, the Botanical Gardens Christmas Spoken Here, Whim Museum Starving Artists and the Agricultural Fair.
"Anyone looking for cultural expose on St. Croix will love Mr. Schrader's books," says Kathy Bennett, owner of Under Cover Books in Gallows Bay, which keeps most of his books in stock.
Prose titles include St. Croix in Another Time, George Cornelius' Life and Hurricane Hugo. Schrader's poetry books include No Words Has the Rose and Haiku.
"I want to preserve what is left," he says. "If we lose our culture, we are nothing."
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