Obituary of Walter Ernst Kaufmann

Walter Ernst Kaufmann died peacefully on November 6, 2024, at 98 years old. He lived a long, healthy, and independent life. Walter always said he was fortunate and blessed. We, his children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren are the fortunate ones. He was always there for us. He always showed up. He embodied the spirit, resilience, and selflessness of his generation. All this was packaged in optimism, joyfulness, and living every day to the fullest.

When he was only seven years old, Walter lost his father during the depression, but he was double loved by his hard-working mother who had neighbors and relatives help look after him while she worked as a private caregiver for others. Walter had a proclivity for tinkering, and he worked in a bike repair shop as a boy, who then developed into a leather-jacketed motorcycle rider and a handsome teenager - James Dean look out! Like many young men of his generation, Walter was thrust into adulthood by WWII. After high school he enlisted in the Air Force, hoping to become a pilot, but trained as an aerial gunner. His military buddies became lifelong friends. After the war, Walter attended Georgia Tech on the GI bill and married his high school sweetheart, Sheila Kenny, who had written him letters everyday while he was in the service. She taught grammar school while he earned his mechanical engineering degree, and then his master’s degree.

Walter and Sheila eventually settled in Denville NJ on Indian Lake and raised their six children. Initially, they only had one car for her, and he walked or rode his scooter to the train station to get to RCA where he worked until his retirement. The train allowed him 40 minutes of peace and quiet each way!

Walter and Sheila both valued education and encouraged their children to explore and imagine. Because he worked for RCA, the house had the latest TVs including early color models. However, even back in those days of early media Walter and Sheila were concerned about kids having too much screen time. So, Walter disconnected the TV power cords, stashed them in his briefcase and took them to work; no TV during the week, and only briefly on weekends. Their children were raised to be active and curious about the world around them, and to find their own individual paths.

Walter loved sailing on the lake and taking the kids to go to the lake beach. However, going to the Jersey shore with a six-kid-loaded station wagon on a hot summer’s day with no air conditioning was another matter. His children only got to know the beaches of Sandy Hook since it was the first shore exit on the Garden State Parkway. At the end of the beach day, the neat and ever prepared Walter scrutinized sandy feet dipped in a water bucket before approving car re-entry, forgetting about the clumps of devious sand in the bottom of their bathing suits.

His children remember him working hard, amassing old tools for house and car repairs, and being a tremendous handyman. Saturday mornings are remembered fondly, mostly. After awakening his six-kid chore crew with the bugle blare of “Reveille” and “Coming in on a Wing and a Prayer” among others, they marched down the stairs awaiting orders. Walter was organized in everything he did, including trying to organize his children - everyone had their assignments. Once the kids were dismissed, he had his own tasks often involving repairing their old cars while Sheila kept him company sewing while sitting on a chair in the driveway, or gardening in the nearby flowerbeds.

Not only did Indian Lake serve as an idyllic backdrop for Walter and Sheila’s children, it also served as their own social life. Raising six children left them little time to spare, but the neighborhood was close knit; neighbors to talk with, group gatherings for sledding or skating, fathers sharing tools and helping each other with ladders, punctuated by Walter and Sheila going out to dinner and a movie. Walter was a supervising engineer at RCA, and a few times a year his group of engineers gathered for a good-natured, low stakes poker game. He always gave his dollar winnings to the children the next morning. The anticipation of him winning, the faint smell of cigars escaping the open-windowed and closed-door kitchen, and the muffled clash of chips into the night kept his kids awake with the novelty and excitement of it all.

As his children entered high school and beyond, Walter had more time to sail on Indian Lake and took occasional weekends with Sheila to sail on the CT shore. He bought an old 1969 MGB. He joined the Indian Lake tennis team and became pretty good, playing doubles into his early 90s at the Park Lakes Tennis Club.  He had hoped to fly planes during the war, but their pilot training roster was full. That dream finally took shape when he joined a flying club in Morristown in his late 40s.

Family was always the most important thing in life to Walter. His six children gave him fifteen grandchildren and thirteen great-grandchildren. He often happily mused that he started his life as an only child and now had such a large family surrounding him. He dropped his own retired life to help his family with after-school grandpa pick-ups, childcare for weeks if needed, drives to medical appointments and therapies, and a myriad of home repair rescues. He opened his heart and home to help, never saying no to his family, a steadfast problem solver always. Over the years his house became full of family photos and collages, 100s of them; they brought him joy every day. His grandchildren are/were very much part of his life, as he was a part of theirs. They and their children will miss his presence.

When Sheila died in 2008, Walter was comforted by memories and photos of the large Kenny family he had been a member of for so many years, and by the steadfast support of Sheila’s siblings and in-laws. He was fortunate to have found a new companion, Regina Tarleton, to share his travels and life. They took trips to Italy, Portugal and some of the Caribbean Islands. Walter would say he was the luckiest man to have found two wonderful women to share his life - noting the co-incidence that both Sheila and Regina were smart, Irish, schoolteachers. When Regina died in 2018, Walter was 92, and it was a great blow to him. He slowly recovered his footing by making new connections at the local library movie nights, and at the YMCA when at the same time his tennis doubles days came to an end.

As his life got back on track, Walter took a few trips to Club Med with some of his children, including March 2020 when they took a last evacuation plane out from Turks and Caicos because COVID restrictions were starting. As in all things, Walter approached COVID restrictions with resiliency – looking at each day as a gift, a gift to be healthy and alive. He never complained of loneliness, although given COVID and his age, his social life was now severely limited. He kept busy in his “castle” of high -gloss, easy clean 1950s turquoise and yellow walls, constantly puttering with projects, working in his tool-filled basement, and riding his exercise bike. He taught his family through his remarkable example, how to be resilient during that depressing and frightening time, how to see that keeping busy and keeping active and having a positive outlook is important in life. He got many calls every day, greeting each caller with “I am wonderful” and he meant it. He maintained this attitude for the rest of his years.

Walter was an inspiration. He was full of spirit, joy, generosity, and kindness. He worked hard in his life and faced obstacles, but he saw each day as an adventure. He lived independently and steadfastly resisted giving in to the illnesses that were slowing him down. He kept busy even while his mantra became “no rushing”.

Lest we forget, Walter will also be remembered for his wine and coke cocktails; happy whistling; his bucket hats; black licorice and ice cream floats; his love of doing laundry and his dislike for dusting; his love of James Bond movies and Jeannette MacDonald musicals; his 20 vitamins and 90 grams of protein a day; and for being king of the microwave.

This is our wonderful father, grandfather and great-grandfather in brief. We will miss him so very much. We cannot thank him enough for his care, his love, and the life he shared with us.

We are having a family gathering to share our stories and to honor him, and then will inter his ashes in the Kenny plot in Calvary Cemetery, NY. If you want to commemorate our dad, doing something nice for someone else in his memory would be perfect! 

Walter is survived by his children: Walter (Janan), Anne (David), Tom (Laura), Laura (Skip), Julie (Geoffrey) and Joseph (Toni), and 15 grandchildren and 13 great-grandchildren.