OBITUARIES : Rosary Scheduled Friday : Banker and Civic Leader Edmund Schnieders Dies

A rosary will be recited Friday night at 8 at Cabot & Sons Funeral Chapel in Pasadena for Edmund F. Schnieders, veteran Southland banker and civic leader.

Schnieders, a 40-year employee of Security Pacific National Bank and the executive who figured prominently in the mergers that led to that institution’s present structure, died Monday at St. Vincent’s Hospital in Los Angeles. He was 83.

He began in the banking industry here in 1927 with what was then Pacific Southwest Trust & Savings Bank. He was in the audit department two years before the stock market crash that led to the Great Depression.

Loaned to Arizona Bank

After the market’s collapse, Schnieders was put in charge of restructuring the bank’s examiners. He soon was loaned out to an Arizona bank that, like many other American banks facing closure, was reorganizing.

When he returned three years later, Pacific Southwest had merged with Security Bank and he quickly moved up the executive ranks.

Before retiring in 1967 as assistant to the chairman of the board, he had been intimately involved with subsequent mergers with Farmers & Merchants Bank (1956) and Pacific National Bank (1967), which produced today’s Security Pacific National Bank.

His charitable, service and philanthropic activities before and after retirement included the Los Angeles County Heart Assn., Immaculate Heart College, Loyola University, the lengthy campaign that raised $7 million to move the Little Sisters of the Poor from East Los Angeles to San Pedro, and the St. Vincent’s Medical Center Professional Office Building.

Foundations’ Trustee

Additionally, he was a trustee for the Carrie Estelle Doheny and Fritz B. Burns foundations and helped found the Southern California Assn. of Philanthropies, an umbrella group that established standards for charitable grants.

He was a Knight of Columbus, Knight of St. Gregory and also was named a Knight of Malta by the Pope.

His funeral Mass will be celebrated at 11 a.m. Saturday at Holy Family Church, South Pasadena.

He is survived by his sons, Edmund Jr. and William, and 10 grandchildren.