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Ted Bauer passed away Wednesday at the age of 104.
Early in my career, Ted was wrapping up his long career at The Marietta Times. Before his time at The Times, he served his country as a bombardier in a B-17 over Europe.
When I was in high school and working at The Times, Ted was the soft-spoken news editor that had the only office in the newsroom. From it he wrote the editorials that appeared on the opinion page for years. Later he would move to a desk at the other end of the room where he could normally be found either writing or reading the work of others.
Long before my time at The Times, Ted was a reporter. Decades later I did research on historical front pages of The Times and frequently I would see "By Ted Bauer" at the top of the stories. The 1957 premier of the movie “Battle Hymn,” starring Rock Hudson, was one of the thousands of stories Ted wrote for The Times.
When you are a young journalist, you end up working nights a lot, and this was when I really got to know Ted. Ted wrote a weekly column for The Times for years, even after he retired. He normally wrote it in the evening when things were quiet. He wrote hundreds of columns. That is a lot in a town the size of Marietta. I have written this column weekly for nearly six years or around 300 weeks. I ran into Ted on Front Street shortly after I started. He told me that he enjoyed my column but also warned me that eventually I would run out of ideas. He never did, or if he did, he was well past the mark that I have gotten to. He was always a joy to have in the newsroom.
The Washington County Historical Society has 417 of Ted's columns indexed in a notebook. Staffers in Special Collections at Marietta College have recently started saving them from microfilm. I have had many people tell me we should publish them in a book. That's likely a good idea, but it would have to be a big book because he wrote for so long about so many people, most of which he likely outlived. Over the next few months, we plan on re-running some of his columns in The Times. I recently looked through most of the columns he wrote to draw some inspiration for my own.
He loved to share war stories with me from his time in the B-17 over Europe. A few things have stuck with me all these years. The first was as a bombardier he was actually flying the plane as it came over the target.
Flying over Europe was dangerous, and he told me of two missions where they almost didn't make it. During one, the plane lost three engines, limping back on just one. In another story, the plane got caught in a downward spiral that was so severe that the force bent the wings of the plane upward. It was a miracle that he made it back home.
While at The Times I always remember Ted being tanned, and bald. In fact, his nickname was "Baldy Bauer." He was tanned because he always played golf. He loved the old golf joke that he only played in days ending in "y" or that he hadn't played golf since "yesterday" no matter what day you asked him. Outside of The Times office at 700 Channel Lane was a patch of grass where Ted planted a plug from a putting green. The grass eventually filled the entire area between the front door and a sidewalk leading to an employee entrance. It is still there.
The fact that he walked the golf course may have been one of the reasons he lived for more than a century. He must have walked millions of steps at the Marietta Country Club. By all accounts he was a very good golfer.
After retirement, he spent a lot of time at his driving range at the Washington County Fairgrounds. In addition to handing out buckets of balls, he would also hand out some pretty solid advice to people to help them improve their swing. I'm left-handed, and I still have the odd assortment of clubs that Ted gave me to try to get me into the game.
Ted was a Marietta Times institution that became a pillar for the whole city that got to know him through his writing. He served his country, city and newspaper well. Thank you, Ted.
Art Smith is online manager of The Marietta Times. His column normally appears on Saturday. He can be reached at asmith@mariettatimes.com