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Sidewalk chronicles

35 years of setting campus rhythm

By JON WILSON
Published December 15, 2004

Monday brought 50 degrees, but the morning dawned golden bright. An ascendant sun warmed the Snell House porch. On a bench, a cream-colored tabby, striped caramel, lingered in dreamland. At 7:45, Sudsy Tschiderer walked up the steps. Sensing a presence, the cat snapped awake and began meowing. Tschiderer's smile opened like a flower. To a visitor, she said: "Coffee?"

Okay, the nickname. Tschiderer got it as a 12- or 13-year-old. A character named Sudsy on television's My Three Sons had a "little Beatle haircut," she said. So did she. A classmate noticed the similarity. Her real first name is Joan, after the French saint.

Officially, Tschiderer, 55, is special events coordinator for the University of South Florida St. Petersburg. Unofficially, friends say, she is the school's welcoming, all-embracing presence, a kind of campus mom. Her hospitality goes top to bottom: It's for VIPs and the greenest freshman. And the campus cats get Fancy Feast.

She is a familiar face at a Fourth Street bus stop downtown. Every morning she boards the No. 4, riding it a few blocks to campus.

Virtually by accident, Tschiderer began her career at USF St. Petersburg in 1969. She intended to go to the University of Florida, major in journalism, then shoot photos and design pages for Life magazine. But she forgot to apply in time to start a fall term at Florida. She and a friend chanced to pop into the curious, old Bayboro Building A, once home to Merchant Marine trainees. It had become a USF branch four years earlier. Tschiderer picked up a class schedule.

Her first was a few weeks later, the late Harry Schaleman's world geography. She recalled that four other students showed up: her friend Pat Uhlman; Dottie Spicer, the St. Petersburg mayor's wife; Edna Ruth Johnson, ballet dancer and magazine editor; and a gent called Bubba - who received the only A. The class's cozy, vaguely eccentric composition hooked Tschiderer. In a way, it seemed a microcosm of the whole school.

"To me, that's the strength," she said. "It challenges ideas. It makes you more of a creative person. It's a living laboratory, not in the sense of a science lab, it's a laboratory of ideas. It's an extraordinary experience. I didn't leave the campus."

Back in the day, she founded what became the Crow's Nest, the campus newspaper. She developed a student activities program. She helped open a coffee house, a den called The Mushroom.

"She did everything," said Debra DiGiacomandrea, who said she was one of Tschiderer's comrades in arms. Both played for the USF St. Petersburg Sandspurs, an all-female soccer side whose members put on war paint before games.

But Tschiderer's pride remains the USF St. Petersburg Singers, a musical group whose specialty is entertaining people who particularly love holiday concerts. This season, the group has a busy schedule at nursing homes and senior centers.

Tschiderer sang while growing up on her parents' chicken farm in DeLand, learning old-fashioned songs her mother played on the piano. She knows all the words to The Minstrel Boy, a 19th Century Irish air. Monday, she sang them, casually, sitting down in a Snell House office. Catching every nuance of the soaring melody, up rose her mezzo soprano voice. It filled the room like a bell.

EDITOR'S NOTE: Staff writer Jon Wilson has set out on foot, searching for people who conduct a large part of their lives within a mile or two of Neighborhood Times offices. He'll tell you a little about who they are and what they do. Some you may recognize; others you might not. But all will be everyday folks, each contributing in some way to St. Petersburg's downtown tableau, 2004.

[Last modified December 15, 2004, 00:31:19]