Roy's obituary in LA Times and Register: "we were lucky to have you while we did"

 

This ran in the Sunday December 24, 2023 edition of the Los Angeles Times and the Orange County Register:

July 14, 1955 - November 20, 2023 Roy left us just after midnight on November 20, 2023, with family at his side and Robert Johnson's blues playing in his room. An aggressive brain lymphoma took him away from us too soon, at 68 years old. The loss is shocking and heartbreaking.

Roy was born on July 14, 1955 in Murrayville, British Columbia to Gunther (Manny) and Edith (Sierra) Bauer, German immigrants who had met and fallen in love on board the ship Anna Solain as they left Germany after WW II. After arrival in Quebec, they married and lived in Kemano and Kitimat, British Columbia, from 1953-58, during which time Roy and sister Annie were born, then moved to Vancouver where they lived for two years.

The family came to the United States in 1960, living briefly in L.A. County, then Anaheim, and finally the house they bought near Villa Park in 1961. Their neighborhood was surrounded by orange groves and tall eucalyptus trees that served as windbreaks, and Roy loved walking to school alongside the massive eucalyptus trees that lined Santiago Boulevard. Roy's younger brothers Ray and Ron were born during this period. In 1976, Manny built a home near Trabuco Canyon, nestled among the live oaks and chaparral and graced with a panoramic view of Saddleback Mountain and the hills stretching beyond Plano Trabuco.

When the kids were young, Manny and Sierra took long drives, with Roy and Annie in the backseat for hours on end. Roy believed that his love of music was born listening to the radio on those drives. He found tunes such as "Sukiyaki" and "Midnight in Moscow" magical, then and for all of his life. Music was deeply important to Roy, and he introduced his family to music he loved from early days: "Dark Side of the Moon," the Moody Blues, Neil Young, Willie Nelson, and the Tijuana Brass were at various times family favorites. In the late 80s, Roy and his brother Ron enjoyed recording their own musical compositions on 4 track tape.

The Bauers were deeply attached to their animal companions, and Roy's love for animals was constant all of his life. The family dogs Billy and Ildy, from the early days in Trabuco Canyon, were especially dear to Roy. He adored his loyal companion, Teddy Bear, a rescued tabby who loved taking walks with Roy and tree-climbing when the spirit moved him, and who greatly amused colleagues and students with appearances during Roy's on-line meetings and lectures.

Roy excelled in the Cub Scout and Boy Scout troops his father led, achieving Eagle Scout rank in 1968. (He was always amused that his Eagle diploma was signed by then-President Richard Nixon.) He attended Villa Park High School, then earned a B.A. and a Master's degree in Philosophy at UC Irvine. He found a great gang of friends in the graduate program at UCI who played volleyball for hours on Friday afternoons and goofed around on Balboa Island and Laguna Beach on weekends. He and fellow graduate student Kathie Jenni became friends during that time and fell in love. Roy married Kathie in 1982 at the Jenni ranch in Montana, and the two enjoyed fifteen years together, loving their life and home in old-town Orange. The marriage came to an end, but the two remained close friends for all of Roy's life.

Roy joined the Irvine Valley College faculty in 1987 and taught there for 37 years. He was a passionate and committed teacher with a deep interest in ethics and political philosophy, and a passion for moral issues such as animal rights that energized his teaching. Roy served for over 25 years on the Academic Senate. In the 90s, he watched as leaders of a then-corrupt faculty union allotted themselves huge salaries and endorsed Board of Trustees candidates whose singular qualifications were avoiding scrutiny of inflated pay scales and accepting union leadership's endorsements. One was a conspiracy-theorist and Holocaust denier. These circumstances inspired Roy to attend and record board meetings, do extensive research, and feed news of district shenanigans to newspaper reporters. Soon he founded Dissent, an investigative journalism newsletter which he wrote, illustrated, photocopied, and hand-delivered to faculty, staff, Board of Trustees, and union mailboxes at both SOCCCD campuses, IVC and Saddleback. Dissent reported on the Holocaust denier and inspired two community-sponsored recall efforts. Roy endured personal and political attacks, bogus disciplinary actions by administration and, due to his vigorous and relentless criticism of corrupt board members, was ordered to attend "anger management" classes. This delighted him. Represented by legendary civil rights attorney Carol Sobel in trial, Roy prevailed in court. The impact of Dissent cannot be overstated: its vigilant reportage led to political change in district and campus leadership, democratic reform of the union, improved oversight policies, and affirmation of both academic freedom and the value of public higher education. The UC Irvine libraries feature digital archives of Dissent the Blog, and recently agreed to accept the Professor Roy Bauer Papers into their Orange County collection.

Roy was an exceptional person, deeply loved, admired, and respected. He was never a conventional thinker, and impressed even those who (roughly) shared his political and moral outlook with penetrating critiques of accepted wisdom, popular trends, idiotic jargon, superficial thinking, and cliché. He was a superb philosopher and a talented historian, delving deep into Orange County history and chronicling his parents' early lives in Germany.

Roy's bravery in the face of disease and intensive care was matched by his moral courage in standing up for what was right. He was incredibly, unhesitatingly generous, bestowing gifts both small and very large indeed on family and friends. He cultivated a wide range of interests ranging from language to film, physics to politics, cooking to veterinary practice. He was a brilliant writer, with a genius for satire and wickedly hilarious graphics that animated Dissent. His love of music was eclectic and discerning, and many of his friends found their way to new and old music alike through Roy's discoveries. He appreciated a wide range of genres and sensibilities, from Bulgarian choral folk to contemporary rock, from Mo-Town to punk, but most of all, and always, the blues.

Roy was preceded in death by his parents, Manny and Sierra, who passed in 2017 and 2019, and his younger brother Raymond, who died in a work accident in 2001. He is survived by brother and sister-in-law Ron and Susan Bauer, sister Annie Kook, longtime friend (and former wife) Kathie Jenni, nieces Sarah, Catherine, and Natalie and nephew Adam; office mate and great friend Lisa Alvarez, beloved pal Jan Rainbird, and many other friends and colleagues.

Roy, we were lucky to have you while we did, and we will hold you close in our hearts forever. We love and miss you fiercely.

Remembrance [of Roy Bauer] by Matt Coker in Citric Acid

 

In the latest issue of Citric Acid, former OC Weekly writer and now UC Irvine School of Social Ecology’s Social Media Manager Matt Coker remembers Roy Bauer:

 

Having spent too much of my youth reading Mad, Cracked and National Lampoon—blatantly plagiarizing the latter’s high school yearbook issue for my high school newspaper’s April Fools edition nearly got me removed from the editor’s chair—I felt I found a kindred spirit in Roy Bauer. His Dissent newsletters tackled important issues swirling around his beloved Irvine Valley College and IVC’s South Orange County Community College District overlords in true muckraking fashion. But Dissent’s presentation was slavishly sophomoric, filled with rude and crude images that were gif- and meme-worthy before anyone knew what the hell a gif or a meme was.

My memory could very well be faulty, but I believe IVC English Professor Lisa Alvarez first alerted me to the shenanigans happening in the SOCCCD alphabet soup in the mid- to late 1990s, with source material coming in the form of Dissent clippings that both enlightened me and made me envious because of the hilarious images, headlines and overall snark. I seem to recall Professor Alvarez leading me for the first time to the classroom of IVC Philosophy Professor Bauer, who provided a sobering overview of the SOCCCD shitshow.

That meeting, Roy’s follow-up calls and emails and my trusty Dissent subscription produced short items in my OC Weekly printed blog-before-there-were-blogs column "A Clockwork Orange" (that I now wish I’d named "Clockwork Orange County"). My clips, more reporting and attendance at, oh, let’s say colorful SOCCCD Board of Trustees meetings led to the April 10, 1998, cover thumbsucker “The Evils of Froguenstein: The real monsters behind community college trustee Steven J. Frogue.” (If you want to read it a) God bless you, and 2) Don’t try OC Weekly’s archives because … does OC Weekly even have archives? Not that I can see. Probably went down with a former owner’s Chris-Craft. Fortunately, Roy reprinted the whole thing for his own blog-after-there-were-blogs blog, Dissent the Blog—with the original OCW cover and much better illustrations than what we used inside.)

To quickly recap the Frogue thing without prejudice, we turn to Terry O’Banion, author of The Rogue Trustee: The Elephant in the Room (2009, The League for Innovation in the Community College) and the chapter titled “What Motivates the Rogue Trustee?” (that makes me wish we’d used fROGUE in our headline).

Presidents and other members of the board have a particularly challenging situation when the personal agenda championed reflects values and prejudices that are anathema to educational culture. While educators usually support the examination of all sides of an issue, it is embarrassing for the college as a whole when one of its own trustees publicly champions a perspective that few educators can support. One of the most challenging cases cited by a number of presidents in this study is that at the South Orange County Community College District (SOCCCD) in California—a case that has been very public in the local press and on faculty-sponsored websites, so it can be referenced here.

In 1998, Matt Coker, a reporter for the OC Weekly, described in detail the efforts of a college trustee at SOCCCD to persuade the college to sponsor a seminar on the John F. Kennedy assassination. As the board president, he got his fellow trustees to approve spending $5,000 in district funds to pay four speakers. The speakers included talk-show host Dave Emory, who contends Nazis who fled defeated Germany played a leading role in slaying JFK; John Judge, who says a cabal of gays and the military-industrial complex was behind the killing; Sherman Skolnick, a contributor to Spotlight, which the Anti-Defamation League calls the most antisemitic publication in America; and Michael Collins Piper, who wrote a book claiming that Kennedy’s assassination was a hit orchestrated by top-level CIA officials in collaboration with organized crime and Israel’s intelligence service, the Mossad. The national media covered this case, and there were protests from hundreds of local citizens, including college faculty and students, as well as a number of local and national organizations. In response, the board of trustees decided to move the seminar off campus; it was finally cancelled. There are many, many details and problems surrounding this personal agenda by a trustee in a very complex situation that has become a legend in California community colleges.

Before we go any further, if Rob Reiner’s new podcast concludes actual German Nazis (as opposed to the lame, Trump-loving kind) locked arms with gay Defense Dept. warmongers, CIA spooks and Mossad agents to off Kennedy, scrunch what you just read into a ball, swallow it, and lose this IP address.

As for our dearly departed Professor Bauer, please know that he kept me in the loop about SOCCCD shenanigans for years and years, and while I always appreciated the chuckles, I also knew that despite Dissent’s Mad/Cracked/Lampoon-worthy takes, deep down Roy despised the unnecessary shame that came his school’s way. He would have preferred the shit for the shitshow had never been … um … shat. He really cared, and I hope someone coming up takes his lead.

To read the rest, click here.

SOCCCD Faculty Association newsletter features two tributes to Bauer

 

A Friend Pays a Musical Tribute

At the Sunday December 10 concert on the Rezanoor Stage at IVC, Professor Emeritus Stephen Rochford conducted IVC's Wind Symphony in "Lyric for Band" by George Walker.*

Steve dedicated the piece to Roy and his choice words which preceded were perfect. Steve and Roy served well over two decades together in IVC's Academic Senate and in the struggle to restore integrity to the college and the district. Did Steve mince words? Are you kidding me? Steve is a class act. No word mincing! Gimme some truth as another musician, John Lennon, might say.

*In 1996, George Walker was the first African American to win the Pulitzer Prize for Music, awarded for for "Lilacs," a piece for voice and orchestra featuring Walt Whitman's poetry.

Roy could be counted on to snap cool pics of Steve at commencement in his finery. Here's one:

As Steve told me, "We're all hurting and we're all feeling grateful for having Roy in our lives."

Cherish each other people.

*

Last Stand on Jeffrey

 

By Rebel Girl's count, there are five orange trees left at the corner of Jeffrey and Irvine Center Drive, where Irvine Valley College stands. This week, she noticed activity around the two on Jeffrey.

Two workmen, a small bulldozer, tools. Reb had time, so walked over, tromping over the dusty weedy empty lot where, when she was hired thirty years ago, a full grove stood. Back then, student clubs held “orange picks” to raise funds, selling the fruit to those who would pick their own. We didn’t raise much money, but it was fun. The groves thinned as the college expanded. Through the years, she noticed others, immigrants it seemed to her, who would come to the shrinking groves in spring and cut bunches of orange blossoms. Every year, the fruit would grow, but without proper care, was small, hard, too sour to eat. No one came to pick anymore. Still, in the spring, the college still smells of orange blossoms.

The tree stood, its round crown full of pale fruit, its trunk where it met the earth surrounded by a square moat, the dirt broken into dark crumbles.

Gerardo told her that were not cutting down the trees, just digging holes around them so they could be moved. Yes, she could take a picture. Pero, por que?

Rebel Girl explained the best se could. She is a teacher at the college, and a poet. Poets like trees.

He laughed. He praised her Spanish for its accent as she apologized for everything else.

Finally they talked about Nicaragua where he was born and grew up and fled and where she had been once in 1984. The war? Yes, la guerra. Where did she go? Managua, por supuesto, Matagalpa, Leon, San Juan de Sur. A beautiful country. And now? They were in agreement about Daniel Ortega. Rubén Darío? Yes, Gerardo knew the grand poeta de Matagalpa. Everyone did.

In Darío’s poems you can find trees, lots of them.

This is one of his most famous:

Fatality

The tree is happy because it is scarcely sentient;

the hard rock is happier still, it feels nothing:

there is no pain as great as being alive,

no burden heavier than that of conscious life.

To be, and to know nothing, and to lack a way,

and the dread of having been, and future terrors...

And the sure terror of being dead tomorrow,

and to suffer all through life and through the darkness,

and through what we do not know and hardly suspect...

And the flesh that temps us with bunches of cool grapes,

and the tomb that awaits us with its funeral sprays,

and not to know where we go,

nor whence we came! ...

"Ain't no room on board for the insincere"

 

Roy and his boy Teddy. 2021

I would amuse Roy with stories of my students. He would amuse me with stories of his. We kept each other amused. 30 years of stories. 30 years of students.

One motif: students who were related to notables. The civil rights leader Medgar Evers' grandson. The great-granddaughter of actor Fred McMurray. Some great-grandchild or great-grand something of writer William Styron. The scion of the great Kenyan writer Ngugi wa Thiong'o. An estranged descendent of James Irvine. There they were, in our classrooms, in our offices, asking for letters of recommendations or just hanging out.

This encounter in 2012 particularly delighted Roy:

So this morning at the Writing Center at the little college in the orange groves, I am working with a student, last name of Zevon. She is doing well and I help her to do a little better. At the end of the conference, I say, "Zevon. Unusual name. By any chance are you related to the singer-songwriter Warren Zevon?" 

I almost don't say this as it sounds so foolish, but I do. It's been almost ten years since he died plus, what are the chances?

 I get a big smile. 

"He was my father's cousin," she says. "Uncle Warren. A little crazy." 

"I love his music," I tell her. "It means so much to me. If I keep talking about it, I'll start to cry." So I walk away, work with the next student. So it goes.

Mutineer - by Warren Zevon

Yo ho ho and a bottle of rum
Hoist the mainsail, here I come
Ain't no room on board for the insincere
You're my witness
I'm your mutineer

I was born to rock the boat
Some may sink but we will float
Grab your coat, let's get out of here
You're my witness
I'm your mutineer

Long ago we laughed at shadows
Lightning flashed and thunder followed us
It could never find us here
You're my witness
I'm your mutineer

Long ago we laughed at shadows
Lightning flashed and thunder followed us
It could never find us here
You're my witness
I'm your mutineer

I was born to rock the boat
Some may sink but we will float
Grab your coat, let's get out of here
You're my witness
I'm your mutineer
You're my witness
I'm your mutineer
I'm your mutineer

*

Roy Bauer tribute at SOCCCD Board of Trustees Meeting: "I think it's clear Roy was the pulse of Irvine Valley College and he did make the district better." - Tim Jemal

 

Karima, Roy and Rebel Girl heading for Zov's for another legendary lunch.

Rebel Girl attended the SOCCCD Board meeting Monday night, a perfect way to honor Roy. After all, as someone remarked, Roy probably attended more board meetings than anyone except Marcia.

This was an extraordinary evening, a moving tribute to Roy and perhaps the first time ever Robert Johnson was played at a board meeting.

Here's a link to the recording with the highlights noted below:

Rebecca Beck, Margot Lovett and Melanie Haeri: 37:41-45:40

Scott Greene: 47:31- 48:11

Chancellor Barnes: 1:31-1:33

President Hernandez, Chris MacDonald, Cindy Vyskocil: 1:38-1:40

Marcia Milchiker and Tim Jemal: 1:43- the end

So proud of us all, what we are able to do together.

Rebel Girl knows Roy was too.

As Chris MacDonald said, "We'll miss you, brother."

Rebel Girl and Roy in their natural habitat.

Yes, Roy was an Eagle Scout. Of course, he was!

Cookiemas, 2018.

Our new home: 2014.

Commencement, 2016.

Portrait of Roy's old desk beneath the window in the A-200 office where he spent the years of 1987-2016.  (I joined him in 1993. The office space is now occupied by Lewis Long. The student is probably still there.)

A drawing of Roy, aka Chunk Wheeler, drawn by Rebel Girl and Red's kid, circa 2007 when the kid was four or
five.  

Roy and Beth Sanchez, post-commencement gathering. May 2009.

Roy in San Francisco, 2013.

Roy at Ken Brown's wedding in 2009.  IVC old-timers will remember Ken as first a student, then an adjunct instructor of Philosophy who was later "fired" by Dean Howard Gensler.