By JOSEPH KELLARD
Baumann and his wife, Rosalyn, ran Camp Baumann on Brower Avenue and, later, a second camp in Merrick, and Baumann Buses Inc. and Nassau Coach in Oceanside, which serviced children in several towns throughout the South Shore.
The Oceanside camp grew out of a nursery the Baumanns started atop a building on Long Beach Road in the summer of 1946, called Bob¹s Kiddy Club. ³Bob started out going from house to house knocking on doors throughout the community to get parents to put their kids in our nursery,² Rosalyn recalled.
Two years later the Baumanns open their camp on Brower Avenue (across the street from the Oceanside Jewish Center). With no business experience, minimal college education and some guidance from their parents, the couple was nevertheless able to sustain and expand their camp and bus companies.
³My father would bring parents to the camp and show them around,² said Sharon Herlihy of Cooperstown, New York, one of Baumann¹s four children. ³He was a good salesman and astute businessman. Both my parents thought well on their feet, and my father showed good vision and imagination to improve his camps.²
One of his then innovative ideas, Herlihy said, was to install a pool at Camp Baumann. In addition to swimming, the camp also featured horseback riding, boxing, volleyball, wood-working and baseball. And through Baumann¹s association with some professional sports team, he was able to bring in Joe DiMaggio, Pee Wee Reese, Duke Snider and Carl Erskine to teach at his camp.
The Baumann¹s opened their Merrick camp on several acres of land at Babylon Turnpike in 1955. This Camp Baumann included a roller skating rink, canoeing in a nearby stream, miniature golf, a frontier town and a 90 x 125-foot swimming pool. The couple ran both camps simultaneously for seven years, servicing between 500 to 600 children each summer. And their bus companies, first used only for their camps, expanded to bid and contract yearly with several south shore school districts, and transported about 1,250 children a day. Baumann also made strides in safety in busing, including developing safety traffic precautions and setting national safety standards.
Key to Baumann¹s success, however, was his ability to connect with children, Herlihy believes. ³To watch him at the camps with the kids was like watching a pied piper,² she said. ³It was just a natural way he had that was almost magical.² Herlihy recalled that her father, known as ³Uncle Bob,² would entertain the campers by dressing up in various costumes, from policeman to clown to American Indian to Santa Claus, and that he was ³extremely spontaneous² in ways that brought smiles to kids¹ faces.
³I remember once he started a food fight with my mother, and then they hosed each other down,² Herlihy laughed. ³And that brought a lot of calls from parents telling us how much their kids loved it.²
Born July 2, 1922 in Oceanside, Baumann was the youngest of six children, and played football for both Oceanside and Baldwin high schools. After eloping with Rosalyn in 1941, he enlisted in the U.S. Marine Corps and was stationed in Cherry Point, NC, in 1944. After returning home to Oceanside, Baumann earned the ranks of captain of Rescue Company and chief of the Oceanside Fire Department, and president of the Oceanside Kiwanis Club, an organization that services poor children locally and worldwide.
Baumann¹s main love, however, was football. He was a running back for the semi-pro team the Long Island Anthonians, a semi-pro team that played before crowds of 3,000 people at stadiums in Valley Stream and Freeport. He tried out for both the New York Giants and Pittsburgh Steelers, playing exhibition games for the black-and-gold, but never making it to the regular season squads.
³Bob loved football and was always talking about it,² Rosalyn said. She characterized her husband as and outgoing man who loved to tell stories and had a good sense of humor. ³Bob loved people,² Rosalyn continued. ³He was always interested in people and loved talking with them and getting to know them. And he seemed to know instinctively if you were a good or bad person.²
Herlihy remembers her father as ³extremely generous,² easily loaning or giving money to friends when they were down and out, and recalled how his instincts as a firefighter to help others would often overtake him.
³Throughout his life, when he saw an accident on a road, he would always get out of his car to assist in rescuing people,² she said.
The Baumann¹s eventually sold their camps and bus companies throughout the 1960s and 1970s. The Oceanside camp was eventually demolished and condominiums built in its place. For tax purposes, the couple had to repurchase the Merrick camp in 1981, renaming it Baumann¹s Sports Day Camp, but sold it the following year to George Coleman, who still runs the facility today as Coleman¹s Country Day Camp. The Baumann¹s move to Florida and in 1985 built a home in Fort Myers near golf courses, on whose greens they spent much of their retirement years.
In addition to Rosalyn and Herlihy, Baumann is survived by his son Robert Jr., of Rockville Centre, daughter Penny Farran of Fort Myers and daughter Diana Wilson of Sammamish Washington.
Comments about this story? JKellard@liherald.com or (516) 569-4000 ext. 287.
