Judge remembered for leadership, humor

The sound of bagpipes filled the noontime air Tuesday in the courtyard of the Allegheny County Courthouse in honor of Senior Judge Robert E. Dauer, who died earlier at his Shadyside home.

Dauer, 73, who had been president judge of Common Pleas Court from 1994 until December 1998 and head of the Criminal Division for 17 years before that, died in his sleep of natural causes, the coroner's office said.

His wife, Mercedes, found him unresponsive about 6:30 a.m. and called 911. Paramedics pronounced him dead at 6:59 p.m., a coroner's spokesman said.

As Deputy Sheriff Richard Manning played "Going Home" on the bagpipes, court employees, visitors and Dauer's judicial colleagues looked down from the windows of the courthouse with tears in their eyes. Friends and colleagues remembered him as a dedicated judge and a personable, decent man, full of wit, charm and grace.

"He was my friend for 30 years. He was my mentor as he was to all of us, a mentor and a guide," said Common Pleas Judge Jeffrey Manning, father of the bagpiper.

"Someone who said there is no indispensable man never met Bob Dauer. He was the heart and soul of our court system," Manning said.

Dauer was appointed a judge in 1972, reappointed in '74, elected to a full 10-year term beginning in January 1976, and was kept on the bench by the voters.

The state Supreme Court named him in 1977 as administrative head of the Criminal Division, where he served until fellow judges elected him president judge in 1993.

"What a good guy he was," said Common Pleas Judge Gerard Bigley, now administrative judge of the Criminal Division. "He worked like a horse around here. You could call and ask him to do anything in the world and he'd do it."

In January 1999, Dauer resigned two weeks before reaching the mandatory retirement age of 70, so he could come under a "grandfather clause" that would permit him to be a senior judge beyond the age of 75.

"It makes me a senior judge forever. And I plan to live forever and ever," Dauer said at the time with a chuckle in his voice.

In keeping with Dauer's tradition of putting the courts first, Common Pleas Judge Lester Nauhaus handled the cases Dauer would have heard yesterday.

Nauhaus, who recalled Dauer liked to be called "The General," said, "He was a general. He would do what was best for the people he was responsible for. He was a leader, pure and simple.

"He had a good sense. He knew when a case was nonsense, and he knew when a defendant was a predator and, if he was a predator, he went away for a long time," said Nauhaus, who was the Allegheny County public defender before becoming a judge.

Dauer's death was a double blow to court employees already saddened by the passing Saturday of Common Pleas Judge Paul Zavarella, the administration head of the Orphans' Court and a former president judge.

"The community has lost two outstanding jurists and, more importantly, excellent human beings. I'm numb. I haven't come across two finer people in this county," said Court Administrator Raymond Billotte, who was hired by Zavarella and worked under Dauer.

"It's been a tough couple of weeks for bar members," said Amy Greer, president of the Allegheny County Bar Association, with the recent losses of 3rd U.S. Circuit Judge Carole Los Mansmann and Lynette Norton, who was twice nominated for the federal bench.

Some employees gathered outside the courthouse at lunchtime to ride in vans to the funeral home for visitations for Zavarella and to talk about Dauer's death.

And attorneys reminisced about their favorite Dauer story. At Christmas, Dauer would don a top hat festooned with holly and lit with electric lights powered by a 9-volt battery. On St. Patrick's Day, the outfit was green, of course, and Halloween brought out costumes, the most recent one being when he dressed as Harry Potter, complete with tape on his glasses and a pointy hat.

"He loved a good story and he loved a good joke," said attorney John P. Gismondi, whom Dauer hired while president judge to fight cuts in the court's budget by the former county commissioners.

Dauer "was a jovial guy, but you didn't want to get his dander up if he thought the court was being pushed around or backed in a corner. He was going to stand up for the courts and that's what he did. He was very protective of the courts and the court system."

As a jurist, Dauer was known as a tireless worker. He handled high-profile criminal cases along with his administrative duties, and thousands of hearings for the Accelerated Rehabilitative Disposition program for nonviolent offenders.

As administrative judge of the criminal division, the case backlog was eliminated, due in part to development of individual trial calendars for judges and of programs such as ARD to dispose of nonviolent cases.

As president judge, he oversaw the other 40 sitting judges plus the senior judges, and the county's 67 district justices and elected constables.

"One of the nicest gentlemen I ever knew. He ran this court system extremely well," said Richard M. Scaife, owner of the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review.

Dauer presided at the trial of two North Side teen-agers, Phillip "Rocket" Foxx and Dorian "Dough Boy" Lamore, who killed a pizza delivery driver in September 1993 after setting up an ambush.

Calling the crime "brutal and malicious," Dauer sentenced the defendants to life without chance of parole plus 25 to 50 years in the wounding of another North Side pizza shop employee.

"I don't know how much you like pizza, but it certainly wasn't worth someone's life," Dauer told Lamore.

And Dauer berated teen-ager Bruce Cabbagestalk before sentencing him to 75 years in prison for shooting and paralyzing a University of Pittsburgh student in 1995.

"For the price of a lousy bottle of beer, you have changed the life of Kevin S. Cecil, sabotaged his hopes, obliterated his dreams and demolished his future," Dauer told him. "You are a prime example of what is wrong with many young people today — unconscionable self-indulgence, hate and greed."

Dauer often told jurors to listen to the evidence and pay no attention to the frequent messages and papers handed to him during a trial because they dealt with administrative duties that didn't stop when he was trying a case.

"I think one of the funniest times with Judge Dauer was when he was presiding over ARD hearings with 200 people in the room," said Caroline Roberto, who was head of the litigation section. "He would ask the first-time drunken-driving defendants, always in the best of taste, where they drank and what they drank and how much. The attorneys liked being there just to be kidding with the judge."

Retired industrialist John H. Follansbee remembered Dauer as a man who would go out of his way to accommodate anyone who needed him.

"At my daughter's wedding, which the judge attended, I asked him at the last minute if he would say grace. He was glad to do it. I've known Judge Dauer for years, and I also knew him to be a loving husband and father," Follansbee said.

Dauer attended Central Catholic High School and graduated from Georgetown College in 1950. He attended Georgetown Law School for one year, spent two years in the U.S. Army during the Korean War, then finished his law school education at the University of Pittsburgh. He was admitted to practice law in 1957 and became an associate in the firm of Calahan & Porsche.

In 1960, he became a law clerk for Judge Henry M. Montgomery on the state Superior Court. Three years later, he was appointed an assistant city solicitor and was elected as Democratic chairman of Pittsburgh's 7th Ward.

In 1970, he was appointed chief magistrate by Pittsburgh Mayor Peter F. Flaherty.

Dauer served on the Sentencing Commission in 1989 and was reappointed in '92.

He also served on various national committees dealing with crime and delinquency and metropolitan courts.

Dauer was active in the Pittsburgh Athletic Association. He was a member of the board and past president of the Amen Corner and also was a member of the Duquesne Club and the Serra Club of Pittsburgh.

Dauer served as a Eucharistic minister and an usher at St. Paul Cathedral.

Surviving are his wife, Mercedes "Dede" McSorley Dauer; three daughters, Anne Dauer Danielsen, Mary "Mimi" Dauer Colville and Margaret A. "Maggie" Dauer; a son, Robert E. Dauer Jr.; a brother, John L. Dauer; and three grandchildren.

Funeral services are being handled by John A. Freyvogel Sons Inc. on Centre Avenue in Oakland.

Visitation will be from 7 to 9 p.m. today and 1 to 4 and 6 to 9 p.m. Thursday. A Mass of Christian Burial will be celebrated at 10 a.m. Friday at St. Paul Cathedral in Oakland. Burial will be in Calvary Cemetery, Squirrel Hill.