In the spring of 1986 I got a phone call from my friend Cappy telling me that Florence
had died. Florence was Florence Bauder,
the widow of Fred Bauder, a long-time professor and
colleague of Cappy at the Newark College of Engineering. Cappy was more formally
known as Dr. Achille Capecelatro,
but everyone, including his wife Anna, called him Cappy.
The Bauders and the Capecelatros were very close friends. I quickly came to understand this when in 1980
Cappy and Anna asked me to help Florence with some tasks. Fred had just died, some things needed to be
done, and I lived nearby. Florence was a small,
alert woman whom I can still see working at her embroidery hoop. As a physics teacher, it pleased me to see
how she compensated for her diminished eyesight with large magnifiers and
intense lighting.
The Bauder home in Short Hills was
well appointed. In the central room was
a Steinway Grand upon which stood a trumpet.
Florence
said that when Fred came home from the college each day, he would play one or
the other for relaxation, but now the house was much quieter. One of my first Cappy-directed
tasks was to get a working television for Florence. She mostly read, embroidered, and
gardened. Cappy
said that she needed something else to distract her from her sadness.
Cappy told me that it was always
the desire of the Bauders to leave some legacy that
would support education. The Bauders had one child, a daughter, who was sickly and sadly
died just a couple of years after her father died. With the loss of her husband and then her
daughter, Florence
was ever more determined that an even more enduring legacy should be left. Florence’s
funeral arrangements were simple. A few days afterward there was a remembrance
gathering at the Quaker Meeting House in Chatham.
My last visit to the Bauder home
was in the fall of 1986. Anna Capecelatro, as executrix of the estate, was conducting an
estate sale. I helped her fold up tables
and remove some signs. The place was
really cleaned out. A sadness
was exacerbated by the early darkness, falling leaves, and chill in the
air. As we were finishing up, her
thinking was interrupted by something, and she dragged me to the hall closet
where the clothing marked for charity donation was hung. As we walked through the empty house she said
it is cold outside, and she chastised me for not having a coat on. She reached into the closet and pulled out a
fine men’s cashmere overcoat. She said,
“Put this on! Can you believe that no one bought this? Fred’s good coat! . . . Put it on and see if it fits.” The fit was perfect, and I’ve worn it ever
since.
Cappy and Anna are gone now too,
but whenever I read of the Bauder Fund or its
recipients, I think of them, Florence,
and Fred. I also think of them on cold
winter days when I button up Fred’s cashmere overcoat.
Matt Jusinski, Director of
Instruction
Morris Hills Regional District, Rockaway, NJ
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