The Frederick and Florence Bauder Endowment for the Support of Physics Teaching (Bauder Fund) was established to support special activities in the area of physics teaching, with a provision to support New Jersey Physics Teachers!

Bauder Fund – a recollection by Matt Jusinski

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, 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

Fred on the French Horn