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Chili Cookoff!

The IRCC Maint Staff has scheduled its third annual IRCC staff "Chili Cookoff" competition for Tue., Jan 11. The winner will be decided by our resident "taste testers" who are daring enough to participate. Testing bowls, spoons, all the "trimmings" and fire extinguishers provided, but connoisseurs are welcome to bring their own testing equipment. Members, mark your calendars and come join the staff for a great time--and actually some very good chili--No reservation required--Come as you are or dress the part, amigo!

IRCC's Silver Anniversary!

Time To Celebrate

Our residents will cheer on this celebration with 2 days of fun filled events at a Community Fair, including golf, tennis and Bridge tournaments, Arts and Craft show, Antique Car Display, Clowns (from our own resident "Clown Class"), live entertainment and much more! The At Ease Club, our private Country Club will provide a BBQ buffet and a formal banquet and Cocktail hour will be held at Colony Hall.

If you are an active adult looking for an active community, come celebrate the next 25 years with us!  Call or email us for more fun!

Resident Spotlight on Bob Baden

by John Sullivan

The first Colony Voice Spotlight of 2011 shines on an American’s life story that might typically be depicted in a classic romantic feature film of a nearly bygone era, where the main character would be played by John Wayne or Jimmy Stewart.  This real life story is actually still being lived out by Bob Baden of Freedom Avenue.  Bob is a veteran of three wars and was a rifle platoon leader in Co I, 379th Infantry of General Patton’s Third Army in WW II which made a swift and tenacious dash across France during which vicious fighting took place.  They participated in eight major operations and gave new meaning to “hard charging, hard hitting, mobile warfare.”  Bob led company forces across the Rhine into Germany and was wounded near Dortmund.  More of Bob’s account of his experience later.   Is such a war hero made or born?  

Bob was born and raised in the typical American family in a typical Midwestern town, Peoria, Illinois.  Peoria so typified all that America stood for that Vaudeville showbiz folks used it as a standard and asked “Will it play in Peoria?” before taking a show on the road.  What‘s more, Peoria was home of Caterpillar earth movers and Hiram Walker.  Bob’s dad Fred, a WW I vet and tinsmith by trade, was of German descent, and his mother Elizabeth’s mother, Mary Sullivan was born in Ireland.  Bob was raised Catholic and attended Manual Public High School where he was president of his junior year class and vice-president of his senior class.  Bob proudly keeps the front page of  “The Manual,”  his school newspaper which has a byline: “Robert Baden Elected President of Hi-Y Club; as well as a story describing his junior prom march: “Leading the Grand March will be our junior class president, Robert Baden, and his reigning lady for the evening Florence Wukasch.”  Bob says he taught Florence to dance just prior to the prom because, as a Lutheran, she was not supposed to dance.  Bob’s father stressed to Bob the need to develop expertise in public speaking and Bob took part in drama club activities.

Bob aspired to attend college to study law or engineering but kept his sight on West Point, as well.  Then, his father and uncle organized a veritable task force to secure an appointment for Bob while he was in high school.  Influential people spoke and wrote letters on his behalf and, eventually, Congressman E.V. Champion gave the appointment.  After high school, Bob attended Bradley Polytechnic Institute for one year to prepare for West Point, which enabled him to meet all admission requirements and placed him in the class of 1943.  Bob is the last member of his class to live here at IRCC.   Skip Moore’s late husband was Bob’s roommate in senior year.

Bob met his first wife Robin Whitcraft of West Englewood, NJ in early 1942 at a Sunday Tea Dance at Hotel Thayer.  Robin and some friends had come up from Englewood to attend the dance and when Bob first saw her dancing with another cadet, he decided to arrange a blind date.  The match was perfect and they became engaged in summer of 1942 after Bob’s return from branch trip, and were married on graduation day, January 19, 1943 in the West Point Catholic Chapel.  Not long after, the newlyweds were off to Infantry School, Ft. Benning, GA.  That was the start of, as Bob’s tells it, “a happy and fruitful marriage of over fifty one years.

Officers could bring spouses to Fr. Benning, but they had to find their own lodging.  The war was raging and a cattle car truck took soldiers to base for training, while the women looked for a bedroom for lodging.  They shared a home with a family until Bob received orders to go to the 95th Infantry Division in Sam Houston, TX.  Robin returned home to live with her parents who moved to the prestigious Sutton Place in NYC.   While Bob was on maneuvers in California in November 1943, their first child, a daughter, Christopher Robin was born.

Nine months later Bob deployed with his division to Europe to join Patton’s Third Army in its advance across France to Germany.  Patton told them that “The road home is through Berlin.”   Allied Forces were stalled at Metz and Bob’s Infantry Division, combat operational for the first time,  stormed Metz and its many surrounding fortifications.  Bob’s job was to take a heavily fortified St. Hubert’s Farm atop Ft. Jean D’Arc, which they accomplished.  He recounts that he lost only one man and “put medals on all upper officers.”  By Thanksgiving, “in spite of fanatic German resistance,“ they had secured the town and surrounding region.  They were nicknamed “The Iron Men of Metz” by the German general whom they had defeated.

By December, through cold, heavy rains and mud, which caused a trenchfoot epidemic, Bob’s regiment advanced quickly to the Saar River to attack the Siegfried Line, a fortification, infamous for its reputation of being impregnable.  It was there that Bob was selected to take command of Co. C to replace a leader who was deemed “too timid.”  After the Battle of the Bulge, he led his company in the campaign from the Roer River to the Rhine.  They crossed the Rhine and attacked the Germans in the Ruhr pocket, crossing an open field to houses, which they had to take one by one. The company suffered heavy losses, including two rifle platoon sergeants.  Bob sadly recalls that he had to leave a wounded radio operator behind.  The soldier survived and Bob still sees him at reunions.  On April 12, as he was leading his company against enemy forces near Dortmund, Germany Bob recalls the company fluidly advancing and knocking out a German tank which was “blazing like hell”, causing him to go deaf for a while.  Then, he recalls seeing “flashes coming at them from up the road that knocked the s__ out of me and my buddies.”   US fighter planes strafed the unit, mistakenly taking them for the retreating German Army.  One soldier was killed; Bob and his runner were wounded.  He was hospitalized in England until returning to the US in 1945.

After WW II, 1945-1947, Bob, then a Captain, served as an instructor of Infantry tactics at West Point.  There, his and Robin’s second child, Jeffrey Whitcraft was born.  From 1947-1950 Bob was assigned to Hq. EUCOM in Frankfurt and later, Heidelberg, where their third child, Barbara, was born.  Next Bob served in his second war, in Korea, as commander of the 2d bn. 19th Regt, 24 Infantry Division and Operations Officer of Division G-3.  After the Korean War, Bob attended Command and General Staff College, graduating 7th in a class of several hundred.  At Ft. Lewis, Washington, where he served as Chief of Staff Assistant, their fourth child, Robert Lewis was born.  Then, the Baden’s enjoyed what he calls “three wonderful and busy years in Army Pacific Command and General Headquarters, Ft. Shafter Hawaii. Surely, Bob and his family deserved this tour after what he had experienced and accomplished.  

In Hawaii, he was heavily involved in initial contingency planning for  the South East Asia area, including Viet Nam.  He played a major role in implementing those contingency plans for Viet Nam while at MacDill AFB, Tampa.  President Johnson’s decision to sound ground troops to Viet Nam required a massive increase in the induction and training of draftees, and Bob, promoted to Colonel, commanded a Training Brigade at Ft. Benning, GA.  He was deployed to Viet Nam in August 1967 and assigned to US Army Headquarters in Saigon, Chief of G-3 Plans Division, and later as Chief of Staff of the 9th Infantry which operated from Bien Hoa Province down into the Mekong delta.  As a G-3 of a Corps along the DMZ, he planned and controlled two major operations: the first was the relief of the Marines cut off in Khe Sanh and the second was the first attack of the war into the A Shao Valley where elements of two US Army divisions destroyed large elements of the North Viet Nam Army and their major supply dumps.  Bob closed out his Army career in the Washington DC area as faculty member of Army Management School and in the Office of the Comptroller, 1968-1973.  He retired 19 days short of 30 years of service.  

In retirement, as a civilian, Bob worked for Housing and Urban Development for ten years and later as a management consultant for a small civilian firm.  Like his Army career, Bob’s family and social life has a number of interesting chapters.  Bob and his first wife enjoyed a close friendship over many years with two other couples, Joe and Marie Conmy and Ed and Dot Bennett.  They spent many years together in Germany, but their bond remained strong no matter the distance that their careers sometimes separated them.  All convened for Bob and Robin’s 50th wedding anniversary celebration.  Joe Conmy was the first to pass away and within a year Robin passed away.  The following year, while both were living in Mt. Vernon, Virginia,  Bob and Marie began dating.  Marie sold her house in Mt. Vernon and moved to Patriot Drive in IRCC.   After a visit by Bob to see Marie at IRCC, they decided to get married.  He sold his Mt. Vernon house and moved to Marie’s house on Patriot, and later built Bob’s present spacious, more contemporary  home on Freedom Avenue.  

Now the Badens and Bennetts remained close friends, both in Mt. Vernon and as snowbirds in Florida.  Then, Dot’s husband Ed died.  The six close friends were now down to three.  Not long after, in 1999, Bob was hospitalized with what they thought might be Leukemia and Dot came down from Virginia to visited Bob and Marie.  Soon after, Marie became ill with a lung problem and was hospitalized and was placed in the same room as Bob.  Bob was discharged from the hospital healthy but Marie died not long after.  The last two of the six friends, Bob and Dot Bennett married.  Dot Baden, whom many of us latecomers knew well, died last year.  Of the six friends, Bob, who survived ground combat and three wars, remains standing, and he‘s doing great, having just celebrated his 90th birthday.  He recently returned from a fantastic trip to the D.C. area where he attended three memorable family events in six days: the marriage of a young lawyer granddaughter, the performance of granddaughter Emily at a church service, and performance of  six year old great granddaughter, Arun, in The Nutcracker with the Washington, D.C. Ballet.

Bob and his family remain very close.  He has six great grandchildren and one great grandchild.  One of his granddaughters, Emily, a “showstopper” entertainer has sung at piano bar, and one can tell that she adores him.  Bob has always loved golf and tennis, but he still loves his favorite hobby of socializing and schmoozing with people.