In memoriam: W. David Bauer

Once again, I am re-posting a tribute I wrote four years ago (and have edited as I found more information) as part of Project 2,996, a blogging effort to honor each of the people killed on Sept. 11, 2001.

It is the least I can do. Each year, my stats show that, on this day, many people find this blog by searching for "W. David Bauer," so I know that they still remember and have him and his family in their thoughts every year on this day.

I collected this information from other articles and obituaries found online.

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The victims. We hear it over and over again about Sept. 11, 2001. The 2,996 victims.

The person that I am writing about, W. David Bauer, Jr., may have been a victim for one short moment of his life. But for the rest of his 45 years, he was clearly a winner. From what I have read about him, he was a player and a competitor, someone who took to the field of life with gusto and determination and who gave it all he had.

In the NY Times tribute article, it mentions that he competed in a triathlon on the weekend of Sept. 8-9, 2001 before coming home to watch his sons play football and then to grill steaks and to drink good red wine with his family and friends.

He also played football in college at Villanova and was inducted into their Hall of Fame. One of his friends from college said "His nickname was "Superman" because he could catch the bullet passes of our starting quarterback, Brian Sikorski, with one hand, either hand!"

He also had a lifelong love of basketball and volleyball. His teammate Tom Dooley said "I knew David as a competitor on the basketball court when we were both well past our prime playing days...[He] was a gentleman of the highest caliber on and off the court."

Mr. Bauer played professional football as a linebacker for the New York Giants and another team before being sidelined by an injury.

In business he competed and thrived. He climbed up through the ranks at Merrill Lynch, Lehman Brothers and Credit Suisse First Boston before becoming head of global sales for eSpeed, a division of Cantor Fitzgerald located on the 105th floor of the North Tower. He was one of 658 Cantor employees who died in the World Trade Center.

He also contributed to his community. He was a past President and Founding member of the Villanova Financial Club. He served on the Board of Family & Children's Services and he and his wife were honored with the Helen Hoffman Award for Community Service. He was a member of Holy Cross Roman Catholic Church in Rumson, N.J., where he lived.

Mr. Bauer, who was 45 years old at the time of his death, was married to his wife Virginia "Ginny" and had three children, David, Steven and Jackie, who were 16, 14, and 12 when he died. He and Ginny had met in third grade.

So this is a man who lived, who really lived. He was someone who made good things happen for himself, his family and his friends. The type of hard-working, hard-playing family guy who is the backbone of our country and whom you would probably love as a neighbor.

Since Mr. Bauer's death, his wife has become a leading advocate for the families of victims of 9/11. His children followed in their father's footsteps, becoming championship athletes in their own right.

My very best wishes to the Bauer family. I am sorry for your loss and I hope this tribute did Mr. Bauer justice.

Here is a link to the 2,996 project.

Some of us can move on

First of all, thank you, thank you, thank you. Your words of encouragement make it all worthwhile. Everything. All of it.

I am as good as one can be. I give thanks for the past five years of seeing my Dad twice daily. Not many people get that gift. I did, and even if it meant hearing the German submarine story for the 54th time, it was worth every minute (remind me to tell you how Dad saved 5200 soldiers from being sunk by the German submarine sometime. It is a great story.)

It helps that he passed away in such a relatively trauma-free manner. He was slipping further and further into dementia, and he knew it. So better to go than to stay.

I'm ok. Mom is ok. But someone is not ok.

Goldie is not ok.

My dad drank precisely 3 beers a day. So what if the first one was at 9:30 a.m.? He had been up for 4.5 hours by then, so in his mind it was practically lunchtime.

When I say 9:30, I mean 9:30. Not 9:15 or 9:45. What kind of Army do you think we are running here, soldier? Nope, it had to be on the dot.

The other day at about 9:33, Goldie bolted awake from a deep sleep. She ran to the back door and stood there, looking. Waiting for Dad to come in from the garage, where he kept the beer. The beer he went out to get at 9:30.