Here's a good article that came out a few weeks ago about him
http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/2011 ... erminal-c/
Journey's end for hiking writer Jerry Schad
By Steve Schmidt, Reporter - East County
Wednesday, August 10, 2011 at 8:20 p.m.
Is there a patch of dirt Jerry Schad hasn’t walked?
For decades, he’s been our Juan Cabrillo, exploring every nook and canyon, tramping coast and countryside. He is the man behind what is widely considered the local bible of hiking, “Afoot & Afield San Diego County.”
Now his world is no bigger than his bedroom.
He’s been bedridden since June. He’s weak and is getting hospice care. He takes morphine at night for the pain.
The veteran outdoorsman and writer learned in March that he has final-stage kidney cancer. He figures he may only have a few months left, if that, and has already penned his own obituary.
In the mornings, his wife, Peg Reiter, opens the blinds of their downtown San Diego condo and they cuddle and talk.
While they can.
They only met last year. They married five months ago. He was 61. She was 54. On their first date, they hiked Balboa Park and Peg managed to match his then-blazing pace.
They were in step from the start.
“Here I meet this woman and it’s perfect and I just wanted to share all these experiences,” says Jerry, resting on his bed. “And all of the sudden, boom, it looks like it’s not going to be possible.”
Peg curls up to him and strokes his hand.
“This man, this beautiful man, who was just the love of my life, I have waited 54 years to meet,” she says. “And I get him such a short amount of time.”
So they find themselves on a journey they didn’t expect, knowing the trail splits up ahead.
Instant chemistry
It was thoroughly modern romance from the start: They found each other online, on match.com.
They agreed to meet in Balboa Park. It was March 12, 2010.
When Jerry saw Peg that first time, it was like one of those movie moments, when the chemistry is instant and the attraction whole.
When Peg saw Jerry, she was just as hooked. At the time, he looked much younger than his age. Plus, the man was a machine. He blazed 30 miles or more each week, part of it in the backcountry, where he seemed to know each trail down to the boulder and gopher hole.
Twenty-five years after its first publication, “Afoot & Afield” remains a dog-earned favorite among outdoors types and has sold 160,000 copies. The latest edition includes walk-throughs of 250 coastal and inland paths.
Lasting trails
Schad, an avid photographer and former East County resident, has also written books on cycling and trail running. Until recently, he penned an outdoors column for the San Diego Reader.
When Peg met Jerry, he was teaching at Mesa College, where he was chairman of the physical sciences department. Before that, he was an instructor at San Diego City College.
At that first get-together in the park, Jerry walked fast. So did Peg. “My first thought was finally here was a man who walks my pace,” she said.
They ate dinner together that night and over the next few months it was one adventure after another: touring Big Sur, kayaking in Iowa, watching meteor showers in the Anza-Borrego Desert.
They talked about marriage and bought 40 photo albums — enough, they told themselves, to last for decades. They planned to fill one album each year with pictures from their favorite jaunts.
The albums are now tucked away in a closet in their high-rise home.
Dogged by a persistent cough, night sweats and weight loss, Jerry saw his doctor earlier this year. A CT scan followed and on March 24 the couple found out he had Stage 4 kidney cancer.
Acceptance came quick. He had little choice. In his case, radiation and chemotherapy treatments offered little to no hope. The cancer had spread to his spine, lungs and lymph nodes.
Four days after the diagnosis, they got married at the County Administration Center downtown. She wore a black cocktail dress and held a clutch of white calla lilies.
Those decades they figured they would have together? They now knew it was more like a few months.
They aren’t the type to wrestle over why it happened or to search for some higher meaning.
“What I hate hearing is when people say, you know, there’s a reason for everything,” Peg said. “There’s no reason why this man got cancer. Don’t try to tell me there’s some rational reason, some lesson to be learned from all this. There isn’t. This man should not be sick. Period.”
She is a former human relations director at a San Diego firm. Both were married once before. Jerry has a grown son, Tom, from that previous union.
As Jerry’s full-time caregiver, Peg provides him Tylenol in the morning and morphine at night.
She’s helping put the final touches on his new book, “50 Best Short Hikes San Diego.” His publisher expects it to come out in the fall.
He sleeps 13 to 15 hours a day now. His appetite and short-term memory are waning.
He says he dreams a lot about the outdoors. It’s often he and Peg on some adventure.
Peg plans to hold a memorial for Jerry on a Sunday after his death. She has already written what she wants to say.
“Even though Jerry took me to many beautiful places geographically, the most wonderful place he took me was to his heart,” reads part of it. “I shared more with Jerry Schad in our short time together than I have with some who have known me my entire life.”
The memorial will be held at the El Cortez Hotel downtown. It took Peg three phone calls to the El Cortez to set it up because the first two times she was crying so hard.
“Sometimes I try to give her little pep talks on, you know, life goes on,” Jerry says. “But it doesn’t do any good so I don’t do that anymore. I think she’s suffering, I’m sure, more than I am.”
Rebuilding a life
Peg plans to scatter Jerry’s ashes in the Anza-Borrego Desert, where they once watched a meteor shower in the middle of the night.
Then what?
In a notebook she keeps filed away, she’s made a to-do list for the future. Maybe backpacking in Utah and rafting in the Grand Canyon. Maybe getting involved with the same civic groups Jerry has been active in, like Friends of Balboa Park.
“I’m going to have some kind of list, some kind of place, that I can grab onto when I have to rebuild this life of mine. Jerry’s giving me all the tools I need to make an amazing life. It’s up to me to make it amazing.”
May his last days be peaceful and thanks Jerry for all the good write up's.