Pete J. Schaffels; Tax Preparer, Insurance Agent

Pete J. Schaffels, a self-employed Oxnard man who loved to travel, died Thursday after a seven-month battle with lymphatic cancer. He was 64.

“He worked three months of the year in order to travel the other nine,” said his son, Kevin, of Reseda. “That was his life.”

As late as Monday, Schaffels was behind the desk of his Ventura office, where he worked for about 30 years as a tax preparer, real estate broker, insurance agent and notary.

“He was a great fighter,” said his wife, Maria. “Even though he was undergoing chemotherapy, he would put on his red suspenders and go to the office every day.”

When not working, Schaffels traveled the globe. His destinations included Europe, Australia, New Zealand, the Far East and southern Asia. He and his wife spent much of 1992 and 1993 on the road, traveling by car throughout the United States.

Another of his great joys in his last years was playing with his only grandchild, Benjamin.

“He was a doting grandfather,” Kevin Schaffels said. “He loved to get down on the floor and play.”

Schaffels was born in Holland in 1931 and spent his youth there before moving to Ventura in 1955 with his first wife.

The couple ran a coffee shop near the San Buenaventura Mission until the late 1950s, when Schaffels, although not yet an American citizen, was drafted into the Army and stationed in France. When he returned to United States a couple of years later, he worked for a short time as an accountant for several firms before starting his own tax business.

He became a U. S. citizen in 1961.

In 1991, at the age of 60, he married Maria, a family friend from Holland with whom he had kept in touch over the years.

In addition to his wife, son and grandson, Schaffels is survived by two other sons, Brian of Ventura and Michael of Spokane, Wash., and two brothers, Frank of Toronto and Adrian of Amsterdam.

A Mass will be said at 10 a.m. Tuesday at Our Lady of the Assumption Church, Ventura. Burial will follow at Ivy Lawn Memorial Park in Ventura. Arrangements are being handled by Joseph P. Reardon Funeral Home, Ventura.

Ventura County obituaries are published free of charge as a public service to readers. Obituaries are based on information provided by mortuaries.