If you drop by his modest house near downtown Ithaca, Michigan, on a random Tuesday afternoon expecting to have just a quick chat with the multi-hyphenate Mr. Bauer (veteran-war-hero-Spartan-engineer-world-traveler-philanthropist-centenarian), it would only take you about five minutes to realize that you need to adjust your expectations ... and you need to pull up a chair and listen.
Because Ceo Bauer has something interesting to say about everything—from tips on how to invest in the stock market, to what it was like landing on the beach in Normandy shortly after D-Day in 1944, to extremely thoughtful and nuanced takes on current world events, and he feels duty-bound, as a soldier, but also as a person who has lived longer than the rest of us, to pass his wisdom along.
From combat to college
There are two things that have shaped and enabled Ceo’s life-well-lived: the first is World War II. The second is the civil engineering degree he earned at Michigan State University.
A rifleman with the storied 95th Infantry Division, he and his fellow soldiers helped liberate the city of Metz, earning them the nickname the “Iron Men of Metz,” and a lifetime of gratitude and adoration from generations of the city’s people.
Ceo was injured in action in November of 1944, and was unable to return to combat. So, with a Purple Heart and the G.I. Bill to his name, he came to East Lansing in 1945 to get a degree.
Was the transition from service to school difficult? Of course it was. But his infantry training and the time he’d spent in France, sleeping in tents in all kinds of weather (“It was nice!” he exclaims with a twinkle in his eye. “Beautiful scenery! Great weather!” He might be joking, because that’s just Ceo’s sense of humor, but the Metz region is lovely.) did prepare him for one thing: waiting in a long line during a heavy rainstorm to snag a spot in the Quonset houses that MSU had built to accommodate the influx of young men coming to school on the G.I. Bill.
“There were 100 Quonset buildings,” Ceo recalls. “But not all of them had bathrooms in them at the time, and there were a lot of guys in front of me in line. Until it started thunderstorming.”
He pauses dramatically.
“I’m an infantryman! I toughed it out! And I got a Quonset with a toilet.”
And, it turns out, Ceo took to engineering with the same aplomb he took to his duties in the military.
After graduation, he joined the Michigan Department of Transportation (then known as the Michigan Highway Department), where he worked for 30 years, using his Civil Engineering degree to the fullest, building Michigan’s brand-new highway system.
As he helped lay the roads, he also laid the foundation for an early retirement, and for the half-century of philanthropy, storytelling, and adventure that followed.
A sense of duty to share
At 102, Ceo is one of MSU’s oldest living alums, and holds the record for the longest history of consecutive giving to his alma mater—72 years and counting.
His first gift of $10 has given way to thousands of dollars in support since, for everything from the Civil Engineering program to the Spartan Marching Band to WKAR.
A supporter of education in general, Ceo also gives to nearby Alma College, and has funded a scholarship through the Gratiot County Community Foundation for college-bound students from Carson City High School.
But he’s also spent time on the other side of philanthropy: generously offering up the gift of time, which, at 102, he has been blessed to have a lot of. He has used it to keep the memory of his fellow soldiers alive, by helping to have monuments placed in their honor; by participating in documentary films and never saying no to an interview; and by being one of an ever-dwindling number of veterans who regularly return to France to pay respects and reminisce.
It’s clear that Ceo shares out of a sense of duty. But as you listen to him, as you watch his eyes well up over an 80-year-old memory that still hits just as poignantly as it did the day it happened, or hear him cackle over the hilarious thing that happened to him in that military hospital after his injury (a story for another time), you can see that it also just...energizes him.
Because by sharing pieces of himself and his story with fellow veterans, with fellow Spartans, with the young people he helps send to college on scholarship, or simply with those dear friends who sit down with him for a chat on a random Tuesday afternoon, he’s becoming a part of your story. One that you'll have the privilege of sharing with someone else someday and, truly, Ceo would just love that.