Flexible packaging industry icon Sol Schor died Oct. 28 at age 85.
Schor grew up in the Brooklyn borough of New York, came to California in the late 1950s and worked for a film converter for several years.
Industry contemporary James P. Kelly said Schor “helped in the infancy of the converting industry.”
Mitchell Greif noted: “He went back to the corona or open-flame treating period when everybody in flexible packaging used the technology to get ink to stick to plastic. He was a pioneer of water-based ink technology and the first to be able to print UPC [barcodes] on polyethylene.”
Members of the Schor, Silverman and Abeson families founded Coast Converters Inc. in Los Angeles in March 1964. Schor sold the company to Greif in 1994 and continued to work with Coast Converters for another 10 years.
“He was a great guy,” Greif said.
While untrained technically, Schor had innovative mechanical engineering skills.
“Sol could rig a machine for specialty bag applications before all of the attachments these days,” said Kelly, retired co-founder and CEO of Emerald Packaging Inc. in Union City, Calif.
Schor was approachable.
“I never saw Sol refuse a phone call from a competitor asking for advice,” Greif said. “If a guy called, Sol took the time to take it.”
Kelly agreed. “Sol was a friendly competitor, a good friend and a confidant, and I knew him for 55 years. You could talk to Sol on different things. No one in the industry had a grudge against Sol.”
The California Film Extruders and Converters Association, now operating as the Western Plastics Association, presented Schor with its highest honor, the Leo Shluker Award, in 1995.
Schor lived in the San Fernando Valley region of Los Angeles County with his wife of 66 years, Leona.
Other survivors include two children and multiple grandchildren and great-grandchildren. In recent years, he suffered pain from symptoms of the condition peripheral neuropathy.
By Schor's direction, the Neptune Society cremation service in Sherman Oaks, Calif., sprinkled his ashes in the Pacific Ocean. Schor specified that no funeral or memorial service take place for him.