As a kid I remember the house in
Piedmont N .Y. My uncle's mother
"little grandma" to me lived in a small
living quarter at ground level. 
My uncle Eddie had I believe was a
69 Mercedes Sedan that my brother
and I found interesting. Interesting 
enough to get into mischief.
Behind the house there was a rather
large wooded area of tall trees
and brush.
Aunt Charlotte was a good cook
especially those empanadas or 
meat pies. 
It was so good for my brother and I to
get away from the projects in Manhattan.
Posthumously all I can say is thank you
for having us to two beautiful people.

Few days ago I was in Rome. In front of the Spanish Steps I found myself looking for a community of Friends that Charlotte told me it was there. I guess I was 30 years late...

Last weekend--including what would have been Charlotte's 90th birthday--I was on a field trip under abnormally hot conditions for Washington State.  Really hot.  I was thinking back to when Charlotte and I (and Stefano Lugli once we arrived) took 16 students to Sicily on a UW Exploration Seminar in 2008.  This past weekend in Washington I was describing to the Univ. of Houston students these previous hottest days I had spent in the field.

When we were planning the Sicily trip, Charlotte said it had to be September for two reasons:  1) the August vacations would be over, and 2) it wouldn't be too hot.  I did a reconnaissance trip that year in March and with help from a local Professor Lentini identified a fabulous outcrop of interbedded basalt and carbonates where students could measure a section.  I didn't pay too much attention to the fact that the outcrop was south-facing, and of course black with basalt.  We just about fried that day.  We cut the exercise short and had a long lunch at a local inn, in the shade.  Here is our blog about that day (and you can read about other days and see more pictures of Charlotte and students):  http://uwsicily.blogspot.com/2008/09/heat-wave.html

Another day we were measuring marine terraces and gave up and went swimming.  Then (another day) came the gypsum quarry -- at least we were there in the morning -- gypsum is very white, thus reflective, so while not baking like basalt, it throws heat and light.  And another day Stefano took us to salt works at Trapani -- salt is even whiter than gypsum!

The one day of real relief was when we went down into the Realmonte salt mine, cool ... and shady, of course.  Charlotte and Stefano are just-about revered by the salt-mine geologists for their work -- real rock stars!  That morning visit was followed by lunch at a restaurant on the beach.  Charlotte and Stefano know how to mix field work and good food!

I first met charlotte when she came to Rutgers as a new student. We became friends immediately. And she was  certainly "salty". She invited several students to visit Lamont and her husbands laboratory. After she graduated we met once in a while at meetings to remember the old times. She was a great colleague and a friend.

I’ve always referred to Charlotte as, “My aunt, who partially raised me.” I silently add “...and saved me,” because that’s a burdensome conversation.

I can trace so much of who I am to Charlotte, to include many of the things I most appreciate in myself, sprinkled with some that I don’t.

Her photos indicate a benign intellectual, but she was nothing of the kind. Charlotte blazed her own trail for the entirety of her 89 years. Take faith. Born in 1931 to Jewish parents fleeing Eastern Europe, as a teen she independently explored houses of worship until finding a home within the Quaker community. She was a Friend for life. As a teen she also applied to Hunter College high school unbeknownst to her parents, and there she began her life as a scientist.

She married young, had two daughters, and lived as wife, mother and eventually teacher, roles expected of women of her generation. It was not enough. She always wanted more, and was not shy about voicing it—to her husband, to her children—I imagine it was easy for no one.

In 1974 (now 43) she stepped alongside my uncle Ed as a PhD in geology and became a researcher/professor. She was one of a scant few women in the field. By the time I was a teen she was well known and filled my young mind with stories of her successes as well as the slights and challenges she experienced. Charlotte was wired to fight; it was a basic component of her makeup. It explains her ability to push along in her career and eventually defy expectations of her age. It also interpreted into interesting everyday dynamics.


During my tween and teenage years she had “made it” and my frequent visits, in addition to respite from a challenging home life, were opportunities to immerse myself in her world. In addition to time in the lab I enjoyed meals, card games and “yo yo fights” with both grad students and top scientific minds in the world. Of course I had no idea they were experts. They were just my aunt and uncle’s smart, fun friends. They welcomed, challenged and encouraged me.

What did “making it” interpret into? Well, she was a woman, and Charlotte at that, so continued battles and slights. Alongside these she travelled all over the world: I remember her research in the Dolomites, in Poland, Egypt (right during King Tut mania), and Ellesmere Island (location of the earth’s geomagnetic pole). Too many places for me to keep track of. At 79, she was field teaching geology in China. Think on that. In recent years she was awarded the highest international honor in her field.

In 1991 My uncle Ed was killed in a car accident. They had spent the previous years planning their retirement; they bought land on a mountain in rural NC and designed a home. Now alone in a world turned upside-down, Charlotte moved onto the mountain.

For years, she hauled and chopped the wood used to heat the house with a stove. She lived a half hour up windy mountain roads from the nearest public building—a post office. Despite this, she never lacked community. She was active at Celo, a Quaker community, and continued to teach at Appalachian State University, travel to lecture, and work with grad students.

After a while, she recognized that it was time to live less remotely, and in 2005 she built yet another life, this time in Seattle. She became an Affiliate Professor at University of Washington, found yet another community of Friends, continued to travel and collaborate and mentor. Just last year she lectured in Texas. Imagine that.

Her professional accomplishments aside, this sometimes awkward force of nature (she spoke “cat” when at a loss for human words) taught me the value of occasional self-contradiction; the concept that it can be generous to compromise one’s own priorities when the situation calls for it.

Charlotte was intensely practical; she had no use for cosmetics or fooling with one’s hair. As a teen I would carefully remove my nail polish and forego make up when I went to visit. During a particularly trying time at school, I shared with her that I was being bullied, in part because I didn’t have the “right” designer jeans. They were ridiculously expensive and it would never have occurred to me to ask for them. I was railing about the social mores of the south shore of Long Island (perhaps a clue as to why I didn’t fit in) when she announced that we were going to the mall to buy me a pair of these jeans. I was shocked. It went against every aspect of her lifestyle. She loved me, though, and understood the ways of the world. She saw my pain and wanted to do what she could to alleviate it. Of course it was my time with her and Ed that was the balm; the jeans got me nowhere. But the lesson in compromise and perspective-taking has lasted a lifetime.

She was social and awkward, supportive and stern, loving and stoic. I’m not sure if she ever told me that she loved me and I also never doubted for one moment that she did, enormously. Her absence leaves me—perhaps many of us—feeling untethered. We will have to lean heavily on the lessons she taught us, both formal and spontaneous.

Charlotte Schreiber was my teacher, Master’s advisor, Post-Doc supervisor, and friend for more than 40 years.She has made parts of my life more joyous than I could have believed and has exasperated me at times.Through it all, it has been my honor and privilege to know and work with her.

My first encounter with Charlotte was in 1978 when she lectured on sedimentary rocks to a Geology 1 class in place of Allan Ludman.I don’t remember much about the lecture except for the continual mention of wackes, which made it hard for me to keep a straight face.I started to get to know Charlotte better when I worked for her husband Ed preparing samples for physical properties testing.I would work all Friday in Ed’s lab at Lamont-Doherty and then, at Charlotte’s insistence, go to the Friday afternoon seminar, which she said counted as work time.Imagine, being paid to sit and listen to scientists present the results of their research.

Very often, the seminar was prologue to dinner at Ed and Charlotte’s house in Piermont.Charlotte is a great cook and has, as I’m sure everyone knows, the widest range of friends, most of whom are world class geologists (I’m an exception – a non-world class geologist).Those Friday nights in Piermont were magical to me.I never dreamed that I would meet and talk with people such as John Van Couvering, Larry Sloss, John Dewey [who became my D.Phil. supervisor], Walter Pitman, and far too many others to name.

Somewhere along the way she asked if I would like to be her graduate student and do a project on evaporates in Italy.Who could say no to a free trip to Italy? But first I had to get through her Sedimentary Petrology class – and that’s when I started to really get to know Charlotte.I’ll never forget the first class in Sed Pet, I asked what I considered to be a relatively simple question to help me clarify a point she’d made -- and her answer took 10 minutes.About half way through her answer it seemed as if she was going on and on about a whole range of things and never getting to what I had asked her about.Luckily, I did not tune out entirely because somehow in the last minute of her answer [and of the class] Charlotte pulled it all together, answered my question directly, and then pointed out how my question related to the rest of her lecture.That is when I learned to pay careful attention to what she said, no matter how off-track it seemed.

I spent 2 field seasons with Charlotte, Ed, and others in Italy, mostly in the Dolomites but with 2 weeks in Sicily the first season and about a week in the Apennines the second season.The first season was great because much of what we expected to find was very different from what we actually found.However, the second season was incredible for several reasons.

It actually started when Charlotte arranged for me to spend 10 or 12 days in London at Imperial College with Doug Shearman learning as much as I could about evaporites and carbonates.Doug was fantastic and made me work out things that seemingly had no relationship to evaporites (e.g. how serpentinite forms) until he pointed out that hydration and dehydration in ophiolites is similar to phenomena in gypsum.Putting people together and watching how well they interact and help each other is one of Charlotte’s great strengths.

After leaving London [and my departure with Carl Nelson and our race to check in for our flight is a story I’ll leave for him to tell], I went to Paris to meet Ed Schreiber and he, Carl, and I drove 2 cars to Italy by way of Beaune, Zurich, Lichtenstein, and Austria.Charlotte and Susie [one of her daughters] met us about a week [and many bottles of wine] later.

We lived in a rented house Agordo at the foot of the Dolomites [600 meters above sea level] and spent about 8 weeks in the field.Charlotte’s thesis projects required lots of field work and sample collecting.She also gave us lots of other things to do in the field, such as telling her to be careful not to fall into one the many holes near an important outcrop and to be careful crossing a stream.So, of course, she fell into one of the holes and into the stream – meaning that Carl and I had to go get her out without getting thesis credit for it.

During that summer, we went to the Apennines to see primary evaporite facies – Charlotte led us up to a section of the Vena del Gesso through the worst thorns I’ve ever encountered.Of course, as Charlotte explained while Carl and I wiped the blood from our arms, it was clear 3½ months earlier for the IAS field trip she was on.But at least we got to eat in a 3-star Michelin restaurant near Imola afterward.

I spent the following field season as Charlotte’s field assistant on Ellesmere Island in the Canadian Arctic.It was totally different from Italy – no restaurants, sleeping in tents, no contact with anyone except by radio twice a day [and sunspot interference prevented that for about 4 days at one point], and 24 hours of daylight.To Charlotte, twenty-four hours of daylight means 24 hours that you can work.Right!!!

After finishing my Master’s under Charlotte’s supervision I went on to do a doctorate in the U.K. on the tectonics of the Western Mediterranean and then returned to New York to work as her Post-Doc on evaporites as source rocks for 2 years.Most of my time as a Post-Doc was spent doing lab work at the University of Oklahoma, where she had made contact with [and sent me to work with] 2 of the best organic geochemists in the world [Paul Philp and Mike Engler].

From evaporite petrology and sedimentology, to regional tectonics, to organic geochemistry involved some big jumps for me, but for Charlotte it didn’t seem at all unusual.Of course, these were not the only things Charlotte was involved in studying with her students and colleagues.Ask Steve Karner who worked [if I remember correctly] on sandstone diagenesis or Lidia Lonergan [a John Dewey student] who worked on the evolution of the Betic Cordillera.

And those were two of Charlotte’s great strengths – an insatiable curiosity about a range of different geologic topics and the ability to work with and to put together people who can work on wide ranging topics.

Of course, Charlotte was more than just a geologist or a geological mentor.She was first and foremost a great friend.Whether it was Inviting students who were far from home or who had nowhere else to go to an “orphan’s” Thanksgiving at her house, or acting as an unofficial godmother to my kids and to her niece Jackie and her kids, or any of the myriad other acts of friendship and kindness that are too numerous to mention--that was what made Charlotte very special to me and to many others.

Marc Helman

Evaporites and their associated carbonates lost a staunch ally and admirer and colleague – and so did I.  The passing of Charlotte Schreiber has left an emptiness and void. 

She was a component in an era of geological and geophysical excitement focused at the [then] Lamont-Doherty Geological Observatory that enriched our global understanding of not only how this planet functions via the magic of plate tectonics and its associated crustal perturbations, but much else. And that includes the astonishing knowledge retained by Charlotte concerning evaporite sedimentology, alteration, geochemistry, genesis, diagenesis, and so much more – all to be woven into the fabric of crustal plates on the move wrecking ocean basins and creating new seas.

Recollections of being with Charlotte in the field are indelible – struggling through thick brush within some darned stream in the Apennines searching for exposures of Messinian gypsum or Lago Mare sediments… But that was always followed by a wonderful dinner that Charlotte had cooked or assembled with her culinary skills. 

That was also the case with dinners at their house in Piermont on the Hudson that fueled incredible evenings with Lamont colleagues marked by lengthy discussions of their latest scientific focus -- the discovery of Benioff seismic zones, or bollide impacts and dinosaurs, or Milankovitch cycles and climate change, or Ed’s measuring seismic velocities in lunar samples… and blue cheese (and Science published it).  Ed had an impressive collection of classical music on 331/3 records – he and I once spent all night listening to a dozen Requiems as a consequence of an argument at dinner.   

My comments, recollections and praise are a memorial to both Charlotte and Ed -- their significant and wonderful impact on many of us.  It is their legacy.  And that legacy went far in scientifically shaping so many of us.   

Floyd McCoy

Charlotte Schreiber was not your typical mother of the 1950’s and 60’s. That’s probably no surprise to those of you who knew her well.

Fiercely independent and strong willed, she had her own ideas about how to do things and what was important in the world. Suffice it to say that growing up in the Schreiber household was a unique experience. The conformity and constrained role expected of women of her generation during that period just wasn’t going to stick; certainly not if Charlotte had anything to say about it. And she did have a few things to say.

Some of my earliest memories as a very small child living in western New York are of family outings to the local quarry where we would look for fossils. How to entertain your kids? A Charlotte style treasure hunt!

Mom would never allow a television in our house. Summer fun might include my sister and me putting up a pup tent in the yard and hanging out in there reading library books. We were not to listen to the popular music of our peers (much to our unhappiness), but then she would take us into Greenwich Village to hear folk music in coffee houses and at The Bitter End. We didn’t appreciate until much later just how cool that actually was!

Charlotte was comfortable taking charge.
Somehow, she would always know what to do in a given situation. When we brought home orphaned baby raccoons she got us pet nursing bottles and showed how to nurse them, how to wean them , how to take care of them as they grew, how to play with them outside and let them climb trees in the woods until they were mature and ready to be released in a nature preserve.

When we’d come home with some harebrained scheme or something we wanted permission to do, we would ask our Dad, and more often than not he’d say “It’s OK with me, but you’d better go ask the boss”.

It wasn’t always easy to be Charlotte’s daughter. The fact that as young children my sister and I stood between her and what she dreamed of and hoped to be doing wasn’t lost on us. Families are complicated. Ours was no exception.

I remember when I was in undergraduate school in the ‘70’s; I thought it was pretty cool that my mother was in college as well. And when she got her PhD in 1974, I was proud of her. Then she took off on that career she had so longed for. And she soared. Her enthusiasm for her research, for her students, for her travels, and for her teaching knew no bounds.

When Charlotte moved to Seattle in 2005, things worked out better than I could have hoped. It just happened that she bought a house 5 blocks from the home where my husband Pete and I live. Close enough to be convenient, but not so close that we were up in each other’s business. We had not lived near each other previously in my adult life, so this was a time to get reacquainted. And then she built a whole new and very full life, involving herself deeply as an affiliate at the University of Washington and with the University Friends Meeting. It was a terrific third act.

It is going to take me some time to get used to a world without the indefatigable energy and force of my remarkable mother in it.

I’d say Charlotte played it very well, this game of life. In the end, she left very little on the table.

In 2006 Charlotte won the prestigious Sorby Medal, which was accompanied by an international lecture tour.Amongst other exotic places, she was invited to Poza Rica, a oil-company town on the Gulf of Mexico. Planning the trip from her office, she was commenting on the exorbitant cost of the flight from Mexico City to Poza Rica (which others would pay, of course), but I had a brainstorm.  Charlotte, I said, why don’t I accompany you and we can rent a car in Mexico City and drive to Poza Rica, seeing some of Mexico at the same time? I figured I could help her get around, and I am a travel bug (with enough Spanish to get by). I just had to pay my own airfare to Mexico City.
 
Our first stop was a transfer in Houston, where we found ourselves on hands and knees examining the spectacular rudistid limestone on the airport floors.  Charlotte ALWAYS wore her hand lens!

In Mexico City we got our car and proceeded to try to exit the metropolis during Friday rush hour. Our estimated travel time to our first stop, the city of Puebla, was more than doubled, and we had trouble finding our hotel, but finally arrived, and found a nice restaurant. The next morning we walked around the central plaza and then left for Poza Rica. From that drive, mostly what I remember is the many little towns with speed bumps.

Once again, we took longer than planned and arrived after dark, having a hard time finding our hotel. Finally we were in our room, and Charlotte was first to enter the bathroom--we both had full bladders. When she took longer than I expected (and I was a bit desperate), I finally asked, “Charlotte, are you ok?” and she answered “You won’t BELIEVE the travertine in here!” I leave the rest of the story to your imagination, but the travertine was indeed amazing, with beautifully preserved grass stems.

Next day Charlotte was feted by the local society of petroleum geologists, who were thrilled to have a leading world expert on evaporites come to their remote town. Evaporites are a major aspect of oil source and structure in the Gulf of Mexico.

We planned an extra day so that we could visit the local Mayan ruin, El Tajin’  It’s out of the way and thus a quiet place to examine pyramids, walls and other sculptural elements of Mayan culture. I wanted to climb one of the structures, and Charlotte stayed down. You will not be surprised that when I came back, there she was with her hand lens examining the limestone in the structures!