After sailing past his 90th birthday, Donald Joseph Lauer changed course and finally joined his soulmate, Beverly, in Heaven on July 16, 2025. Thus, the grand celebration we held for him was, in effect, his own wake he got to attend in person, celebrated by family and friends from around the globe.

Born June 20, 1935, in Seneca, KS, Don was the third of four children born to Cyril and Geneva (Severin) Lauer. He was preceded in death by his siblings David and Jean Ann, leaving Jim as the last of the four siblings. The Great Depression and World War II shaped the Lauer family’s lives and future. Don’s father, Cyril Lauer, inherited, owned, and operated the family business, Lauer Funeral Home. Like other family members growing up in the family business, Don undertook the somber tasks to help support the family business, including operating the ambulance service, where his duties as a teenager included responding to auto wrecks where injuries or fatalities were involved, or more happily, to deliver babies that didn’t wait to get to a hospital.

Beverly Jo, the love of his life, was teaching in Albuquerque and living next door when they met and broke the ice over a bottle of wine. They married in 1960, enjoying 57 years of dancing, loving, and raising kids, before Bev passed on St. Patrick’s Day, 2018. They have five children: Terri (husband Rick, son Danny, and daughter Hannah), Joe, Martha (husband Carl and son Arren), Greg (wife Shadee, daughter Bella, and stepsons Ethan and Brody), and Maria Kris (husband Travis, daughter Lauren, and son David). In addition, they opened their home and hearts to a son we always felt we adopted, John Bodnar, who has been a loving son and brother.

Don had an engineer’s mind from the beginning, as reflected by his career and tenures at places where his computer and engineering brilliance shone, including ACF, IBM, Arrow Tool, Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory (later Los Alamos National Laboratory or “LANL”), Graftek Design, and LANL again before shifting to financial services and investments.

His lifelong love of the St. Louis Cardinals was more often rewarded than his devotion to the Dallas Cowboys, but he never gave up on either team. He also had an amazing green thumb for growing tomatoes. He was the Tomato Whisperer and could harvest more tomatoes than anyone we’ve ever known. One of his favorite snacks was a fresh tomato off the vine, eaten like an apple but with a bit of salt and maybe a dash of pepper.

As always, Don’s Catholic faith was central to his life, his survival, his successes, and every time he overcame adversity. Don worked hard to inspire friends and family to appreciate the depth of his devotion. He and Bev were among the founding families who came together to build Santa Maria de la Paz Catholic Church and Parish in Santa Fe, New Mexico, from the humble beginnings using the Piñon Elementary School gymnasium for worship, to helping carve a set of corbels that still grace the supports in the finished church.

Don, Dad, Pop, or Pop-pop, we knew you by all these names, and with nobody to respond, we miss you terribly. We miss your scratchy beard, Sinatra, Artie Shaw, and Gene Krupa playing in the background, bear-hugs that surrounded you with love, and your appreciation of finer things like good wine and good food with good people. We are comforted only by knowing that you and Bev have found each other once again, on the same shore, where you both get to do all the things you ever wanted, by the ocean, hand in hand. Bon voyage, you two, we love and miss you.

A memorial service will be planned in the future. Please consider donating to St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital.