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Anyone living in Albuquerque who doesn’t at least recognize Don Schrader either hasn’t been around long enough or isn’t paying attention. His usually barely clothed, tan body is nearly as recognizable as the city’s skyline. There are few whose faces are plastered on postcards. Some might know him as the nearly naked guy who walks everywhere. Longer seated residents, though, probably know him as Don, the guy who has strict and outspoken views on diet, taxes and lifestyle. With long enough conversations, Schrader emerges as Don, the guy with a big heart, a deep belief in forgiveness and a love for everyone—even those who stray far from his way of living.
At 78, Schrader still maintains his decades-long and self-prescribed lifestyle of eating a raw vegan diet, naked sunbathing, urine drinking, conscientiously avoiding paying income tax and living a simplified life that rivals many religious leaders who aim to do the same. But in the past five years or so, he tells The Paper. over a series of conversations in the sunroom he’s made his home, he’s been planning for the one guarantee in life: Death. Having seen a long list of friends and relatives die over the years, death is something he’s always been prepared for, but only recently has he begun to make actual plans. In the past year, he has also softened his stance on riding in cars—something he had adamantly avoided for more than two decades until a still-unidentified person hit Schrader with their car and left the scene. He’s softened his stances on other key doctrines he had previously held for much of his life, but some are more practical and others are products of having an open mind. While he’s shown flexibility on some things, he’s still a true-believer that no one is born evil and that no human is exempt from committing horrendous acts. That belief plays into his quick willingness to forgive—whether it be the man who killed his grandparents in bed or the person who he says ran him down with their car last May. Despite his age and the subsequent ailments he’s started to encounter, he has no plans on easing up on his pillars of life.
Don the eccentric
Schrader can be found most days walking around the city with a cart full of essentials as he runs errands, which include heading to the studio for his weekly public access show, trips to the grocery store for cheaply priced fruits and vegetables or to the library. When he’s not out and about, he’s usually in his modest South Broadway home—which is a converted sunroom attached to the back of a friend’s house. The room isn’t big, but it’s packed full of mementos and trinkets from days past.
“This room is a museum of my life,” he tells The Paper.
Nearly every inch of limited wall space is plastered with photos, handmade protest signs and a plaque, signifying his spelling bee win in the 5th grade. He’s quick to show off a hand mirror that once belonged to his grandmother that he estimates dates back more than a century. Other prized mementos include two bells—one that sat in his family’s Illinois farmhouse pantry and another from the one-room school he attended as a child. Given enough time, he’ll go through every single picture he’s pinned to his wall and name everyone in them.
There’s a picture of Schrader and his mother meeting Rosa Parks in Houston in 1979. Other photos are of old friends, many of whom have passed away, such as his “dear friend Roberto, who died of AIDS in 1999.”
He’s also got a shrine to Don G., one of his former lovers who was killed in a car crash decades ago.
He says the six-window-adorned space is perfect for him since it allows for ample sunlight, which he cherishes almost more than anything. When it’s even slightly warm enough and the wind isn’t too bad, he lays out naked in a corner of his backyard.
“I wouldn’t trade it for a free trip anywhere on Earth,” he says of naked sunbathing.
Schrader’s way of life, he says, is in stark contrast to his strict Mennonite upbringing. Dancing and gay relationships were off limits in his childhood home—although the latter was eventually accepted by his mother when Schrader finally came out to her later in his adult life. He still speaks fondly of both of his parents, but says they had a “miserable marriage.”
“I wish they had parted,” Schrader says. “They might have become good friends.”
When his father died in the 1990s, Schrader and his brother were left with their father’s inheritance.
“My share was about $48,000 which was doled out to me over a period of years in $5,000 amounts,” he says. “So, part of what I have traces back to them before I started receiving services.”
Those services now include a little more than $500 a month in social security benefits and an EBT account that has a credit of about $3,500. His staunch anti-war stance is partly why he lives on such meager finances. In numerous letters he’s written to The Paper. and other local publications over the years, Schrader is adamant about not paying income taxes as a way to avoid funding federally sanctioned and instigated wars.
When certain produce is in season and more affordable, he opts for organic products from the La Montañita Food Co-op in Nob Hill, but otherwise he buys more affordable—albeit not organic—food from El Super grocery store on the Westside. He estimates he eats about a dozen apples a day, along with a concoction of raw seeds, nuts and extra hot red chile powder soaked overnight in water and then blended the next day. He also sustains himself with alfalfa, mulberries and colitas he grows himself in his backyard—fertilized with his own feces, which he buries.
Then there’s the urine, or “piss” as he calls it.
For years Schrader has been known for his outspoken belief that drinking and bathing in one’s own urine is one of the healthiest things a person can do. But among the list of things he’s changed course on over the years is less frequent piss baths. While he still drinks it, he says he has curbed the baths.
“Well partly, I guess, I don’t want people to think, ‘Oh, he stinks,’” he says.
He’s also started accepting the occasional car ride from friends who are already headed in the same direction he’s going. Until he was hit by the car in May 2023, Schrader hadn’t been in a car for 22 years, but thanks to the knee injuries he sustained from the crash he changed course. But, he says, his willingness to accept rides isn’t “particularly” due to mobility issues. It’s simply because he’s “Not quite as committed to never ride in a car.”
Despite his longtime belief that any amount of alcohol, drugs or even processed junk food are some of the worst things people can ingest, he’s also recently become more accepting of others using cannabis as a form of medicine after he saw how it helped a close friend overcome his alcoholism, thanks to the therapeutic use of the plant.
“He uses marijuana, and I’m so glad he does, because in the evenings, it’s almost like he’s a different person in being relaxed and open after all the furies of the day,” Schrader says. “I realized now more than I did back then, that there are many medical uses for marijuana.”
Likely surprising to many, Schrader’s quest to keep his body the healthiest it can be isn’t about living longer, but feeling better while he’s alive.
“To me, more important than longevity is feeling good,” he says.
Don on death
Schrader tells a story about one of his old friends Harry, who was a former Presbyterian minister, to illustrate Schrader’s view on living in the moment.
“The last time I visited him before he died, he said, ‘Squeeze out every drop,’” Schrader says. “How true. Really. I mean, it’s short. Damn short.”
He says, despite thinking about it more these days, mortality has been on his mind starting from a young age. He says he remembers going to his great uncle’s funeral as a young child and seeing his relative’s body in an open casket.
“Before they closed the coffin, the mortician said, ‘Does anybody want to come up for final viewing?’ and I did, of course,” he says.
Schrader says that started his tradition of not only viewing loved ones in their respective caskets, but also giving them a kiss before the lid closes, including his mother and Don. G.
Schrader’s meticulous and frugal nature—he keeps a detailed balance sheet of every penny he’s spent—extends to planning for his inevitable demise.
“I built my own coffin out of half-inch plywood for about 60 bucks,” he says.
In 2018, the same year he built the modest vessel for his final resting place, he also bought a cemetery plot at San Jose De Armijo Cemetery, about five miles from his current home—a site he chose for its simplicity. The cemetery lacks grass that requires mowing, and he says it’s more accessible by public bus lines than some other options. He’s also already picked out six close friends as pallbearers.
“I used to want a big funeral, but I recently decided, no I don’t, because I won’t be there to enjoy it,” Schrader says.
He’s quick to point out that he’s enlisted a couple of trusted people who will be tasked with following his wishes. One of those trusted executors is former Albuquerque Tribune writer and current attorney James Montalbano, who wrote an extensive profile of Schrader in 2007. In Montalbano’s piece, he referred to Schrader as “a unique mix of local celebrity and conscience of the city.”
His specificity about what happens when he dies extends to how his death is announced. He’s adamant that no one pays for an obituary, and he figures he’s notable enough that news outlets will assign reporters to write one.
Schrader has also doled out several copies of his favorite photo of himself—including one to Montalbano—taken at Jemez Springs in the late 1990s. He provided The Paper. with a copy after this writer suggested that the publication might also write one of his obituaries.
“I was actually naked in that picture, but you don’t see my cock and balls, so I suppose The Paper. would be willing to run it,” he says.
Ultimately, he says, he wants to die as simply as he’s lived and posed the rhetorical question, “Why should people spend many thousands of dollars, as they do in this country, on a fancy funeral, fancy coffin, expensive grave and on and on and on?”
Even though he’s fully aware that his, like everyone’s, time might be just around the corner, Schrader says pushing 80 years old is no time to change course from his staunch way of living. “If I were to die tomorrow, from a stroke or heart attack, some people might say, ‘Well, he was a raw foodist, and so careful. Look, he’s dead at 78. And this guy over here, drinks booze, never exercised, never walks, eats junk. He’s alive at 95,’” Shrader says. “Well, that’s not the issue. The issue is, if I hadn’t changed to eating healthy, how many years ago might I have died? And how much suffering before?”
Schrader likens his relentlessness to continue his lifestyle until the very end to a marathon runner.
“Just like in a race, if the runner is able, he or she pours it on for the last bit, and that’s the way I feel about living,” he says. “Am I gonna slow down? Hell no, not if I can help it.”
Don the Philosopher
Schrader, through his many letters to editors over the years and his lengthy discourses on his public access show, can sometimes come across as pious and judgmental. Sure, he has strong-held beliefs about the best way to live life, but kindness and caring generally come first.
“I judge behavior,” he says. “But that doesn’t keep me from being a friend. I’ve had many friends who have suffered horribly from alcoholism or heroin addiction or on and on and on, and I love them even if I hate what they’re doing. So, no, it doesn’t keep me from being the person’s friend. No way.”
Beyond his stances on health, Schrader is something of an atheistic philosopher. He’s got some strong words about most religious teachings, but he also leans heavily on the idea of compassion and forgiveness. While he was raised in a religious home and was even a Mennonite pastor for two years in the 1960s, he abhors religious dogma.
“If anybody’s going to read the Bible, do it with extreme caution,” he says. “Because some of the worst evil ever written in the world, by any source, is in the Bible.”
When he talks about evil, Schrader groups Donald Trump in with Adolf Hitler, but he’s also quick to point out his belief that anyone, including himself, would be capable of atrocities depending on their upbringing.
“Good and evil reside in everybody, and I believe that millions and millions of people in this world have never felt deeply loved by anybody,” he says. “So, they hurt inside, and hurt people hurt other people. Some heal, but it can take years and it can take much help.”
His philosophical belief that no one is born evil contributes to his quick-to-forgive demeanor and that demeanor extends to whoever hit him with their car last year as well as the man who pleaded guilty to killing Schrader’s grandparents in their bed in 1976. That man, Dale Gunther, ended up becoming a pen pal with Schrader until Gunther died by suicide while still in prison some years later.
“He and I became friends, and he appreciated my forgiveness so much,” Schrader says of Gunther. “He opened his heart to me in many letters.”
Schrader says he also forgives the driver who hit him and left the scene last year, even though he’s fairly convinced the driver did it on purpose.
“Of course, I should not have crossed the street that day,” he says. “I saw a car coming up yonder—fast. And foolishly, I crossed. I should have waited. But I’m quite sure the driver, whoever it was, sped up a bit in order to intentionally hit me. Quite sure.”
Still, Schrader says he forgives the driver, even though there don’t seem to be any leads.
“We don’t know who did it, and never will, because nobody observed it,” Schrader says. “There were a whole bunch of people who came afterwards to help me, but as far as I know, no one saw it.”
An Albuquerque Police Department spokesperson did not respond to an inquiry about the investigation and whether there are any suspects.
Schrader, for all his quirks and intricacies by mainstream standards, might be the city’s most famous gay nudist, who drinks pee and eats a raw-food diet, but he’s also one of the most open. In his letters to The Paper., he nearly always ends with a reminder that he loves to answer personal questions. He adds that he always welcomes visitors, whether they be strangers or old friends (unless they’re out to do him harm). He recently received notice of his 60th high school reunion, along with a questionnaire about what he’s been up to. He says he isn’t sure how much, if any, information the reunion committee will include, but the milestone seems to remind him of his days in school as a devout Mennonite.
“When I was in high school, as a very sincere fundamentalist, I did not dance,” Schrader says. “In the phys-ed class, when other kids were going to dance, I was allowed to go to study hall in the library. If they could see me now.”
What’s your favorite Don Schrader story? Email us (along with your name and where you live… as in, “Don, San Jose Neighborhood”) at editor@abq.news and we might use it in a future issue.
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