She served Doylestown’s Village Improvement Association, which founded Doylestown Hospital a century ago, with devotion and endless energy. As vice president of marketing and development, she used her unique creativity and fundraising skills to grow the Central Bucks YMCA.
Wherever Cory H. Schroeder dedicated her talents, she did so with great enthusiasm, skill and spirit, said her friends and co-workers.
Her unexpected death in a car accident April 12 leaves a void in the community she loved. Schroeder, 73, was driving on Greenhill Road in Solebury Township where she lived when she suffered a medical episode that caused her to crash into a tree and an embankment, causing the vehicle to overturn, police said.
Schroeder’s husband, Tom Schroeder, 79, was a passenger in the Volkswagon SUV. He was taken to Doylestown Hospital’s trauma unit where he’s recovering, according to family.
Bucks County Coroner Meredith Buck said Schroeder died from atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease. Her autopsy showed no life threatening injuries from the car accident.
“Cory was a very sweet person,” said Helen Hammes, president of the VIA, a role Schroeder held from 2016 to 2018. As president, she also served on the Doylestown Hospital and Doylestown Foundation board of trustees. Additionally, Schroeder was on the Pine Run Retirement Community Advisory Board; the community “was dear to her heart,” said Hammes.
“We worked on a lot of VIA activities together and for years we worked side-by-side packing hundreds of boxes of Christmas cookies and decorating the boxes,” recalled Hammes.
“She always showed up,” Hammes said, echoing others, such as Joan Parlee, who remembered Schroeder as “always so dedicated to everything she did. She helped wherever she could.”
A member of the VIA since 1998, Schroeder filled many positions, including chairing the fundraising committee and spending countless hours on the Bucks County Designer House & Gardens Committee.
It was Schroeder who noticed a blank space under the Doylestown Hospital sign that sits along Route 202 in front of the facility. “One day, Cory said, we should put a sign there that says ‘Founded in 1923 by the VIA,’ and we did,” said Linda K. McIlhinney, the association’s president from 2014 to 2016. “That was Cory, 110-percent. She really woke us up to re-brand ourselves and promote ourselves in the community.”
Schoeder wrote grants and contributed her “creative and clever” imagination to the marketing committee.
A graduate of Ohio University, Schroeder spent many years in the corporate marketing world and brought those skills to her position at the Doylestown YMCA from 1994 to 2011.
Gene Smith, the Y’s CEO at the time, hired Schroeder. He credited her with raising a great deal of money for the nonprofit and being “very creative” in her marketing position.
“Cory was a real people person, very empathetic,” he said. “We worked hard and we had a lot of laughs.” She was also active in the Central Bucks Chamber of Commerce and was on the faculty of the YMCA of U.S.A., Smith said.
Ro Molyneux was the YMCA’s chief operating officer during Schroeder’s tenure there. “Cory was a phenomenal organizer, she was always there to help and do things for others. She was a fun-loving person, she loved to decorate and she had a great sense of humor,” said Molyneux.
Schroeder, said Hammes, “was a special person and endeared herself to many because of her authenticity.”
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