Meet the Bayers

The Bayer Family Reunion Handbook

By: John Heeg

Edited by: Marianne O'Flaherty Niblock

Genealogical Edits by: Thomas Zito, (John Heeg’s 1^st cousin, once removed)

August 2, 2018

Bayer Family Reunion Intro to those here and those from the past who couldnt be. - John Heeg. honorary Bayer.

Fortunately almost everyone has the same first name, just like my family.

Easy names to remember. John, Tom, Robert, Sean, Marianne, Barbara,...repeat

When we got together when i was a kid, there were 7 Johns in The room. Now just me and one other.

The reunion is the O'Flahertys and Wohrles who are all descendents of the Bayers. But we don't hold that the Wohrles aren't  Irish against them. I bridge the gap being both Irish and German and actually have more Irish in me than the O’Flaherty’s. (Shhhh, we won't tell them about that .1% West African in my DNA, but I sure would pay a million to hear my father blame my mother for it teasingly)

The first person I will cover is John Wohrle, our host in Bayville, LI.  His wife, Judy and he have two daughters. One of John Wohrles ' daughters , Jill, was an intern during the Clinton years in the White House. John Wohrle's other daughter is Jan Wohrle Stebbins.  Both Jan and Jill have one daughter each and both are pregnant with boys due Sept. 2018.

John Worhle

Jan Worhle Stebbins

Jill Worhle

John himself is a former combat Vietnam veteran officer turned lifer in the Army's mechanized infantry (tanks).

John W  and SSG James “Jimmy” Daigle trained at Ft Carson CO in 1969. Jimmy was killed on 14 May 1970 while serving with the 11th Armed Cavalry Regiment in Cambodia. Wait...I thought our government said we didn't have troops there!

John saw combat in Quang Tri Province South Vietnam on 8 August 1969 with 1st BN 77th ARMOR 5th INF DIV.

John stayed in the Army reserves and was a Captain in 1973 when I saw him at an armory in Queens commanding a unit that included my fraternity brother, Paul Scheiner.

John was very much the entrepreneur and needed that flexibility and steady income to handle frequent reserve callups. In recent years he was a contractor for the Army.

I remember even when I was a kid, it always seemed like John had a deal going – trading or selling his bike or skateboard for something.  It always amazed me how he knew what to say to make a deal happen, not something I could fathom.

John's older half-sister is Jeanne Vavruska. Ron and Jeanne V have 3 sons, Ron, Craig and Chris. Jeanne is from a prior marriage of Anne's. Jeanne married Ron Vavruska, a real engineer and the first homebrewer I ever met.

Jeanne Vavruska in the middle

When I last saw them, I was bicoastal commuting every week to Tewksbury, MA working on a contract at a company called Wang Labs. They lived close by and invited me over for dinner.

I tried his Pilsner on that trip in 1986 and it was clear, golden and malty. He said it was much easier than wine, for which he waited a year to ferment and ended up with a big supply of vinegar. He worked on the moon lander built by Grumman. He is the smartest engineer I ever met and when I was in college, I asked him about partial differential equations, a class I was taking and later withdrew. He said he could set them up, but he did not know anyone who could solve them. I did not feel any vindication as I could not fathom how to set one up.

Jeanne and Ron lived a few miles from us in East Meadow for a time and I used to babysit their son Ron.  When they lived there, every Sunday, my mom took us to meet up with Jeanne to go to St. Rafael’s church in Levittown, NY, while my father slept in.  By the time we got home, Dad had 3 newspapers, Kaiser rolls and jelly donuts waiting for us.  I had no idea what was being said in church, but I knew the prayers and ups and downs and mostly marveled at the stained glass.  I would have rather gone to St. Brigid, a much more elegant church where my best friend went.

Billy Wohrle was John's younger brother, my number 2 partner in crime as a kid, and was killed by a drunk driver while Billy was walking home from an AA meeting. He worked as an orderly in a hospital and has some mental slowness and frittered away a portion of his mother’s estate that included a small piece of property in Smallwood, NY He is buried in the plot my Mom bought for her first husband Bill Bayer at St John's Cemetery in Middle Village, Queens (Plot: Section: 21 Row: A. Graves: 393 and 394).

When we were all together in Smallwood for summer vacation, me, Bob O'Flaherty and Billy would play all sorts of nonsense outdoors like putting wild apples on sticks and whipping them to see how far they'd fly, eating wild berries in the woods, throwing dirt bombs, running through the cow pasture hopping over the huge cow flops everywhere.

The one time I remember John being involved in our shenanigans, we were in the cow pasture playing war.  (Yeah, we did that a lot non-PC stuff and at home we had all the WWII gear to play the part – helmets, toy rifles, web belts, Eisenhower jackets, medals, canteens, rucksacks, etc. that our father’s brought home. One of my toy rifles was a full-sized replica of a Springfield 30-06, but my favorite was the pump air shotgun that I could slam-fire as fast as I could pump it.  If I stuck the muzzle in the dirt, it flew out from the pressure).  Anyway, John runs ahead and plays the enemy and stations himself on top of a knoll while me Bob, and Billy take cover behind rocks.  John is making machine gun noises and spraying the field.  Every time one of us would pop up to take a “shot”, he would say, “You’re dead, I’m spraying you.”  I think we got bored then and gave up.

Anne Bayer Worhle on left

John and Bill's mother was Anne Bayer Wohrle, Mary Bayer and Bill Bayer’s sister.  She was married to John and Bills father, John Wohrle a beer distributor salesman.  He gave my father all sorts of lit up Bud and Michelob bar signs to make our basement bar look like the real thing.  Anne knitted a bright yellow baby blanket for my daughter Lisa before she was born. we had it for years and used it for Andrew before passing it on to an employee who needed it. John’s uncle, Tom, was a Monseigneur in the Catholic Church at St. Brigid's in Westbury, NY. That church is likely the most impressive on Long Island. I only saw him infrequently at O'Flaherty family gatherings.

My mother told of a story at the Smallwood, NY (near White Lake, where the Woodstock festival was held in 1969) bungalow (a hand-built ramshackle building built two generations before by these Bayers' grandfather.  It had running cold water from a well, enough electricity to light a couple lightbulbs and an outhouse that Uncle Vin would move every few years, fill in the hole and dig a new hole and put the outhouse on top.  There was a barbed wire fence separating the backyard from a cow pasture that was at least a mile deep, belonging to Farmer Stephenson.

One night, Aunt Anne went out to use the outhouse.  She either had nearsightedness or night blindness, but she came back in and said, “You should see the big white dogs in the backyard.” Everyone went to look, and two white bulls had knocked down the fence.  Bulls aren’t known to be friendly, and it was made out that she pretty much escaped with her life, although I am sure they just wanted some greenery on our side.

Mary Bayer O'Flaherty second from left

Anne's sister was Mary Bayer O'Flaherty, married to John Vincent O'Flaherty. They had 3 children, John, Marianne, and Robert (Bob).

I remember Aunt Mary working as a waitress in a Howard Johnson’s restaurant and I am pretty sure she worked throughout their marriage and beyond.

Marianne O'Flaherty Niblock had full boat chem rides for college, but instead got married to Tom Niblock.  She and my sister, Margaret were as close as any cousins could be, and we were always closer to the Bayer family kids than our Heeg and Honer cousins.  I still remember the two of them dancing, either in the Lindenhurst living room, or the Smallwood bungalow porch, doing the shake to 1960’s rock and roll playing on 45 RPM records, with a stacker in the middle to drop each record down as the previous one finished.  Marianne worked in the Amityville Schools for over 37 years, doing the accounting.

Dawn Niblock Sanchez

 She soon had her first child, Dawn Niblock Sanchez. Dawn met her husband Joe, online, and moved herself and my oldest grandson, Jonathan to Texas over 15 years ago.   Dawn works for the state of Texas, in the department that handles Medicaid, Food stamps, etc.  Joe is a road surveyor, working outside in all that wonderful Texas heat.  They live in Victoria, on the gulf coast, about 2 hours south of Houston.  Their son, Jonathan, 24, is going to college and works part time managing a small bistro type restaurant.

Marianne's son Sean went into FDNY like his grandfather, John Vincent O'Flaherty. Sean was hurt several times with injuries to his neck from falls and couldn’t recover from his injuries within the one-year FDNY requirement and was released on disability.  He became a personal trainer and remained very buff. He went out on disability retirement from Engine 286, Ladder 135 in Glendale, Queens, the "Myrtle Turtles",right near where Nannie Wohrle lived.  This photo was from a few years ago when his house celebrated their 100th anniversary.  His first assignment was in Astoria, Queens, Engine 263, Ladder 117.  He served his probie period there till November 2001, then moved to 135 where a lot of his buddies were.

(Uncle Vin)- John Vincent O’Flaherty was a big, handsome Irishman who looked like Robert Mitchum and should have been the poster for FDNY, because he so looked the part when the department was all white men, even though there were plenty of Germans and Italians in FDNY, the Irish were its face. After he left FDNY, he was unsuccessful at joining the Lindenhurst Volunteer Fire Department, John was killed by falling in front if LIRR train. Coincidently, Marianne's sister in law's brother was the conductor.

Uncle Vin’s favorite line, “I’ll hit you over your Irish head.”

He had a full fire department honors funeral procession down the main street of Lindenhurst.  It was followed by a very drunken Irish wake at Vin’s sister, Mary Amy’s mansion on the water in Amityville.  Mary Amy was a reporter for the Daily News and lived there with their other brother, Dave, who painted water colors.  Some firemen’s hats ended up on the roof, and some firemen in the bushes.

John Vincent was put on permanent disability due to his bad liver (he is Irish after all) from FDNY and he couldn't take being away from his FF brothers and the house. Mary Bayer, after John's death, bought the Bayville Inn and moved in, leaving her house in Lindenhurst to Marianne and her family to live in. Next door to that house was a small wood we would play in. Uncle Vin let my box turtle live there when I was afraid the turtle wasn't eating.

Marianne's other son is Thomas Niblock named after his father Tom Niblock, and they were both Steamfitters; a union craftsman who installs big heating and air conditioning systems in high rise buildings, factories, and nuclear power plants. He has a wife, Barbara Ann, and two kids, Tim, who just graduated high school, finishing on a championship football team. Leaving football behind, and graduating Magna Cum Laude, he has an academic scholarship to High Point University.  Tom and Barbara Ann's daughter Lex is on a champion lacrosse team.

 Tom and Barbara Niblock, Tim Niblock

Lexy Niblock

My number one cousin and friend growing up was Mary and Vin’s son, Robert (Bob) O’Flaherty, younger than Marianne.  When we were kids, Robert took me to the scene of trouble and I always did something stupid to make it happen.

Once at Smallwood, Bob, Billy and I were walking down Delaware Road to go back to the bungalow.  We were maybe 5 years old.  Bob pointed out this fully rusted old 1930s convertible with no doors sitting next to a barn.  I run over and give the steering wheel a spin.  Bees come flying out from under the hood and I got stung three times on the legs and I think Bob and Billy got stuck twice each.  We ran down Delaware screaming and crying for what seemed like a mile but was probably 6 -10 homesites.  Aunt Mary put witch hazel on the bites and we settled down.

My father would never let me have a chemistry set, but I had every other kind of construction, electrical, hydrodynamic building sets, microscopes, etc. Bob had a chemistry set.  We went down his basement, opened up the set and I poured a little of each chemical into a test tube.  I corked the tube and heated it over a candle.  Within seconds the whole test tube explodes, glass flying everywhere.  Somehow, we both were unscathed with our eyeballs intact.

One time when we were thirteen, the adult party got boring at Lindenhurst, so we went to the overpass above Sunrise Highway.  Bob digs out a tiny pebble and drops it hitting a car without any problem.  I do the same.  Soon I get tired of digging out these tiny pebbles and pick up a marble sized rock.  I drop it and bust a windshield.  The couple pull up on to the overpass and take us to Bob’s house where we get the riot act and our parents pay for a new windshield.

Finally when we were 16, we went to the bungalow with Aunt Mary and a friend of hers.  They pretty much left us to our own devices.  Bob had brought two of his brother John’s single shot .22 rifles and a bunch of boxes of .22 short rounds.  We spent the day popping cans off the fence post until it got late, and the cattle started coming in the far end of the pasture.  Bob said we had to stop, but I thought, what’s a little .22 going to do against a cow.  I took one more shot, then we heard a .30-06 round fly overhead.  Not sure if it came from the cattle tender, but we knew it was time to quit.

One night, Bob says let’s go get some beer.  I had a pretty heavy stubble and was tall enough.  I put on a flannel shirt, jeans and work boots to look like a construction worker at the end of shift and Bob told me what to say.  We walked to a local roadside old man bar in White Lake and I ask for two six packs of Bud.  I was shocked when he put them in the bag and I paid cash.  We finished them on the way back to the bungalow and couldn’t even stay on the road, using the whole road, staggering back and forth by the time we got near the bungalow.

The next day we were sitting in the porch with the screen door open. A bat flies in and Aunt Mary and her friend run away from the house, and Bob runs into the house leaving me with the bat.  I swung the door to shut it and the bat tries to fly in.  It gets caught between the door and the jamb and gets squished.  Later I picked it up by the wings and chased Aunt Mary with it.  They all had an old saw that bats can get stuck in your hair.  Down by the lake at sunset they would come out of the trees and swoop down low over everyone to get to the bugs in the air.  Usually that was the signal for everyone to run for the cars.

Bob used the bungalow during the Woodstock festival and crammed so many people into it that the floor broke.  In later years, all the Bayer men went up and tore down the bungalow.

Bob married Carol and eventually moved to just outside Manchester, VT, right across the Massachusetts border, so when I was there I got to visit them too once.  They have two children, Katie and Tim. 

Bob and Carol O'Flaherty, Katie O'Flaherty

Tim O'Flaherty and son

Bob manages a U-haul rental facility and Carol deals in antiques.

Mary and Vin’s oldest son was John O’Flaherty.  John was born in 1943 and during her pregnancy with him, found her brother Bill Bayer, hanging in his bedroom in their house in Hollis.  John was as handsome and tall as his father and even crazier.  He dressed like a 1950s motorcycle gang member with black leather jacket and all.  He was a rough and tumble guy who got into bar fights, jail, drugs, booze and his strong suit, women.  He once worked as an Entenmann’s bread delivery man who went door to door with a large tray with a handle filled with fresh baked bread and cake.  He got fired for taking too long on his route as he spent too much time with many of the women on his route.

He joined the Army’s Screaming Eagles, the 101^st Airborne division, paratroopers.  After he was out he continued to jump recreationally at Lakewood, NJ, next to where the German Hindenburg rigid airship blew up in the 1930’s.  Just after college, thinking about John’s parachuting inspired me to pull together a few college friends and work friends and go down and give it a try.  We were given 4 hours of training on how and when to pull the reserve chute and how to land.  We got into this old DC-3 with just a flat bench along each inside wall and the back door not attached to the plane. We flew in tight circles to gain altitude over the mile-wide sand landing zone. When we got to 3000’, we all stood up and the jumpmaster hooked our main ripcord to a cable that ran the length of the plane.  When I got to the door, he asked me if I wasn’t going to look up to make sure I was attached.  The guy in front of me was in his late 40s or so, a former WWII Army paratrooper.  The sequence was jump, turn to the front of the plane, arch and reach for your reserve, just in case.  He goes, but jumps straight out without turning and the wind slams him against the side of the plane with just his arm sticking across the doorway till he was peeled off.  Then it was my turn, yikes, after that.  But I did a good sequence and can still envision the plane flying away and my canopy unfolding until it popped open, probably a 12 second fall.  These were WWII silk chutes with two handles that you could pull to open a vent to turn the chute so you could move forward in a different direction.  We each had radios to the instructors on the ground and for a big I played with the cords to make it spin and see the view of the Jersey coast. Suddenly, I hear over the radio, “Hey asshole, stop spinning around.”  I probably could have gotten the lines twisted up.  Stuck the landing well.

A couple months later, John Grygotis, my fraternity brother, and I did it again.  Somehow, John ended up in a tree, missing the mile-wide sand pit.  My mom got wind of us parachuting when I was talking to my Uncle Billy, who had Ranger training in the Army, about it and she had a fit. Billy ended up with Patton’s army received a bullet wound to the leg.  He talked about marching along and shooting the insulators off the telephone poles to disrupt German communications and because it was fun. While guarding a bridge, he was hit by artillery fire. The soldier next to him, who wasn’t supposed to be there, was killed. Billy ended up with a head wound and a plate in his head and then sent home.  The Army sent a telegram to my Mom saying he was KIA, but Billy’s letter got to her first. When he walked in the door, my Mom yelled, “Corky!” she was so excited.  Billy looked at her funny because Corky was the name of her dog.

John also worked for my Uncle Billy (my mother’s brother) in the fence business.  One of Billy’s foremen was Elwin Peters.  While in college, long after John had left, I asked Uncle Billy for a summer job doing fencing.  I imagine that John and Elwin got into a lot crazier stuff than I did with Elwin, but we had some wild after work bar hops.  Never worked harder in my life, but my back was ripped with muscle and I had a great time working for him and have a million stories.

John was married and divorced several times and had at least one daughter.  He settled down in his later years with a woman who was tough enough to control him.  He went to rehab and taught art to ex-addicts and amazingly lived into his 70s.

Bill Bayer (William J Bayer, Jr) was Anne and Mary’s older brother.  I never knew of his existence until my sister told me after my mom passed away. I recently remembered digging through boxes in our basement and seeing this blonde-haired Robert Redford smiling jaw and shaped face staring back into the camera in khakis, squatting next to a black boy. He was the first fireman in the family and the picture really showed him buffed out from the job. He joined FDNY before 1940 as the census lists that as his occupation. Recently Marianne sent old pictures of he and my mother, Margaret St. Clare Honer. It must have been right after they were married, as Bill was much thinner and being younger than the picture I saw.  They were married in July 1938, right before Aunt Mary and Uncle Vin got married in 1939. They lived at 6655 71^st St. My mom was born December 31, 1916 and dropped out of high school after the 10^th grade. and knew Aunt Mary from school. Bill completed all 4 years of high school. The pictures Marianne sent show them in Smallwood with my Mom in full horseback riding outfit with knee high boots and wide thighs in the pants.  Bill did a lot of clowning for the camera and it was obvious they were very much in love.  Not sure what happened, but Bill and my mom Margaret lived with Mary and Vin, maybe because Bill was gone.  My father said it was the stigma of facing bankruptcy that drove Bill to suicide on Aug 25, 1942.  He was born Dec 16, 1915.

Before the advent of credit cards in the 1950s, bankruptcy was considered one of the worst things a person could do for their reputation, job and business prospects. Whatever the debt was, he likely could not see a way to pay it back ahead of interest.  Every fireman was on subsistence living and needed side jobs to make ends meet. My father maintained estates on the north shore of LI doing landscaping, painting, carpentry, whatever needed doing to get by.  My father was just in the FDNY at the time of Bill’s death and stationed nowhere near Margeret and Bill.  He was assigned to a fireboat.   He went off to WWII in 1944 and returned in 1945. He was then assigned to Engine 304 in Queens Village and Hollis was next door.  I am sure there were many fire department social functions and likely met my Mom there. He never went to any FDNY funerals, I am guessing due to my mom’s sensitivity to them.

IAt some point in their careers, Vin and my father’s firehouses were each in the next part of Queens.  Vin was in Ladder 150 in Hollis and my father the chauffer of Engine 304 in Queens Village.  They likely backed each other up at different 2 alarm scenes or moved into each other’s fire house when there wasn’t enough coverage in one direction.  Uncle Vin didn’t get to 150 until after my parents were married in 1947.

The guy I've told my kids and everyone I meet the most, Brian O'Flaherty, the guy whose story I have told over and over, retired FDNY Battalion Chief. He could have gone higherbut hated the politics. He first enlisted in the Navy, a contemporary of the younger John O'Flaherty but with better upbringing despite being John Vincent's nephew. Brian's father, Speedy, was in FDNY at the outbreak of WWII and was young enough to enlist in the new Army Air Force as a pilot trainee. The training was pretty dangerous as this account that he survived indicates.

Army Narrative:
Lieutenant Joseph E. O’Flaherty, Ozone Park, NY, was a newly rated pilot stationed at Buckingham Army Air Base near Ft. Myers on the southwest coast of Florida. Training to be a fighter pilot, he had flown nothing hotter than an AT-6 Texan.

In late afternoon of January 22, 1944, he took off from Naples Airdrome (a sub-base of Buckingham) on his third flight of the day. His AT-6 41-361 of Prov FGTS was one of the aircraft scrambled to intercept a simulated attack at 4,000’ against nine B-17s of 715th FGTS, also based at Buckingham AAF, approaching from the south over the Gulf of Mexico. Weather was CAVU. The flight of AT-6 "fighters" successfully intercepted the B-17s and each made several passes at the B-17s.

Following his instructor’s lead O’Flaherty positioned his plane above and behind the seventh bomber to begin his attack out of the sun. The instructor dove on the bomber from astern and broke to the left at about 250 yds. Lt. O’Flaherty closed on the B-17 and failed to break away and his left wing struck the left wing of the bomber. The wing of the T-6 sheared off, throwing the plane into a violent roll. He somehow managed to bail out and landed on a mosquito-infested mangrove island, three miles north of Little Marco Pass, near Naples, where he was rescued at nightfall and treated for facial lacerations and shock.

Witnesses saw the bomber, the B-17F 42-31005, fall onto its left wing and slowly spiral downward. Ten seconds later at 200 ft above the Gulf, the plane caught fire and exploded. It was 1627 EWT. All on board were killed including the pilot, co-pilot, flight engineer, a gunnery instructor and six student gunners.  

He died 6 weeks later when his T-6 plane crashed.

Six weeks to the day after that accident, Lt. O’Flaherty was killed when the T-6 in which he was a passenger crashed. He was flying as observer on a simulated strafing mission on troops in a bivouac area ten miles north of Naples Airdrome.

His real name wasn’t Speedy, it was Joseph, and he died March, 4, 1944 flying over Florida when Brian was a baby. Back to Brian, he has a wife Karin and 3 daughters and a son, who have families. Brian lived in Rockville Center, NY on the border of Queens.

His daughter Tara and her daughter now live there. Brian and Karin moved away after Brian's retirement. Another giant at 6'4", a fireman's fireman and dedicated to the job.

My mom couldn't figure out how he fit in a sub. In FDNY he got 3 bravery commendations and worked only in lower Manhattan. He and Ray Downey, the father of fire dept rescue, formed Rescue 1 in Manhattan and Rescue 2 in Brooklyn around the same time. Ray rose to Chief of Dept by the time of 9/11 and Brian was the last person alive after to see him alive there. AS he was recovering from his shoulder injury, Brian travelled the world after 9/11 accepting awards for the bravery of the 343 firemen killed as he was probably one of the highest-ranking survivors. He went to Canada to dedicate a memorial for the 343 firemen and his name is forever inscribed on it.  He also accepted the Profiles in Courage award from former President John F Kennedy's daughter Caroline. (The award is named after a book written by JFK about prominent Americans who put it all on the line)
Monument placed by the Canadian city of Abbotford, BC and dedicated by my cousin FDNY Battalion Chief Brian O'Flaherty who barely escaped the collapse of both towers on 9/11. Brian planted the tree nearby.

Profile in Courage Award ceremony.  

He was at the WTC for the 1993 bombing and knew its inside construction and the changes to its which saved him. His broken shoulder didn't heal in the requisite year after 2001, so he was forced into retirement.

https://archive.nytimes.com/…/met_WTC_histories_full_02.html

Brian’s experience and the whole 9/11 event, inspired me to take Ventura County Fire Dept CERT training, which let to training with a City of Thousand Oaks Urban Search and Rescue team called DART which was part of the   TOPD, but all volunteers.  I also got my basic EMT license.  In my 5^th year with them I led them as chairman.  On one of our callouts in the middle of the night, I got a call from our detective liaison to get 10 of our 40 personteam to the station, plus make assignments for the day shift.  I started the phone and radio tree and inside of half an hour, our team were dressed in uniform, at the station.  The detective looked up and said, “Shit, you guys are faster than SWAT!”  I learned so many great skills, but my job took me away from the area and I had to leave just as we elected a new chairman, as I didn’t want the job twice.  I had also simultaneously joined the Red Cross and was deployed during Katrina to Alexandria, LA and found myself managing a shelter for 1500 people through Rita’s landfall.

Brian's mom, Margie O’Flaherty, was tall and the most elegant woman I knew. Margie worked as an admin for Thomaselli Concrete for years and did very well, plus was receiving Speedy's pension all those years.

She was also a talented craftsperson and artist and always showed up with something to show us. Two of her hand painted plates hung in my grandmother, Nana Marie Heeg's kitchen for as long as I knew, a present from my mom that she had asked Margie to paint landscapes on. I have them. I always loved to see her come over for her too infrequent visits. I did call her on 9/11 and she told me she had already heard from Brian. She had a house in Baldwin the whole time I knew her.

One St Patty's day, she dyed her hair silver and had one kelly green spitcurl on the front side framing her face. It was the coolest thing I'd ever seen.

I'd overheard one of my uncles (I'll let you guess which one) and others make comments on her beauty.  She never dated after Speedy's death, as he was the love of her life.

Those comments were when I was 20 or so, maybe making her about 50.

Finally, the patriarch of the Bayer family Pappy William J Bayer, Sr. He had been a machinist for the New York City Department of Sanitation. He passed in 1958. He and his first wife Anna were both children of German immigrants and lived at 6653 71^st St, next door to Bill and my Mom. By 1940, they moved to 79-43 68^th Rd.  Even Pappy was registered for the draft in WWII and listed next of kin as his son Bill. After Anne’s passing, Pappy married Margaret. Most people did not like Margaret, including my mom.  My mom always had a soft spot for Pappy.  I only met him once at a gathering at his house around 1955 or 56.  By then he was very heavy set and looked like a big German no-neck burgher with sad drooping eyelids.  I didn’t understand it until recently when the image came to me again.  I was walking past him where he was sitting against the wall staring at the other family members.  I caught sight of him looking at me with the saddest look on his face.  I think at 4 or 5 years old, with my sandy hair at the time, maybe he pictured me as his grandson, his legacy, with his name, as William J Bayer, III.  I guess that makes me a real Bayer.

Ready to do my favorite thing, cycling.

Legend of O’Flaherty

There is an old Irish legend that two chieftains had a dispute over some land.  One of the chieftains was O’Flaherty. They decided to settle the claim by taking their boats out to sea and racing to see who got to shore firsts. Whoever got their first, won the claim to the land. It was very close, but O’Flaherty saw he was falling behind.  He cut off his hand and threw it onto the shore, thereby winning the claim to the land.