Ed Bauer ’61

Ed Bauer '61 believes that his life is a miracle. Two years ago, doctors gave him four months to live, but a lung transplant and bypass surgery saved his life. At 78, he had a new lease on life. “God wasn’t done with me yet,” he says.

Perhaps that was because of Bauer’s noble intentions. While serving as a trial attorney in Atlanta, Ga., for nearly a half century, mostly representing Black, Hispanic, and Asian clients, he saw injustices in the legal system. Once he retired, Bauer made it a goal to make a positive change in the system. 

“Realizing how many people were underserved, I just couldn’t go out on a golf course every day. That’s not how I was taught by Jesuits like Fr. (Charles) Schnoor,” Bauer says. 

So Bauer (“the real Eddie Bauer,” he says laughingly) went back to school, receiving master’s degrees from Temple University Beasley School of Law and Fordham University School of Law in the areas of trial advocacy and international law and human rights. His goal was to work as an advocate for organizations that fought for those who need a voice. 

That’s when his journey was temporarily derailed. In 2020, Bauer grew sick due to complications from idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF), which had progressed to the point where he was given four months to live. Since then, he has worked to recover and get his feet moving toward his goal of making the legal system more accessible for those like his former clients. In the meantime, he works as an ambassador for the Pulmonary Fibrosis Foundation (PFF). 

As ambassador, Bauer works to raise awareness for the disease and support those who suffer from it. “My journey was a very lonely one,” he says. “I want others in my situation to know they have support.”

Growing up, Bauer says that the Prep was “just part of our household.” His dad, Ed, was a member of the Prep class of 1932. Though Mr. Bauer, unfortunately, passed during Ed’s junior year, he made sure that he told his son about the impact the Prep had on him. “Throughout his life, my father attributed all of the success he had to the Prep,” Bauer says. “When it came time for me to go to high school, he took me aside before my first class and told me that if you make it through the Prep, two things will happen to you: 1) you will become a member of a family; 2) you will count it as one of the greatest accomplishments in your life. I have realized the wisdom of those two statements. Besides my parents, the Prep was the most transformative thing in my life.”

The ethos of being a Man for Others was instilled at home and at school. He remembers legendary Jesuit Rev. Charles Schnorr, S.J. ’32 telling students in Latin class that they were obligated to go out into the world and make a change. “He would look out the window and say ‘you need to go no further than across the street,’” Bauer remembers.

Bauer has stayed connected to the Prep, especially Prep Crew. He rowed in Nationals in 1960 and 1961 in a double and has joined teammates at the Head of the Schuylkill. He indirectly credits his experience with rowing for him being eligible for the transplant. 

“I fell in love with rowing and continued doing it well after leaving the Prep,” he says. “The doctors said I was in excellent health and a candidate for transplant, and I think that was because of all of the rowing I had done.”

Bauer, who has returned to the area and now lives in Haddon Township, gets emotional when discussing the Prep. “That school means the world to me; it really does,” he says. “It is me. Those Jesuits and lay teachers formed me, there’s no doubt about that. More than Fordham; more than any graduate school. Any success that I’ve had in my life is due to my parents and the Prep, much like my dad.”