1929 – 2023
Officer, Gentleman, Most Beloved Father, Grandfather, & Husband
George Nicholas Backus was born in Brooklyn one week prior to the Stock Market Crash of 1929 (any connection, we are assured, is purely coincidental), and raised in Manhattan. As George was careful to remind anyone who stayed still long enough, he worked from a very young age in his parents’ flower shop, including holidays — which provided him with a strong work ethic and an excellent excuse for pretending to dislike Christmas for the rest of his life. As a teen, George was admitted to the prestigious Stuyvesant High School to pursue advanced academics in a college preparatory setting, in between his rigourous schedule of stickball, basketball, and ensuring the NYPD stayed on their toes.
Although accepted to matriculate at Princeton University, George instead decided to attend City College of New York in order to continue helping his parents in their business, which will surprise absolutely no one who knew him. Upon graduation, and wishing to serve his country, he enlisted in the United States Air Force for a two-year stint, but after a lively debate with a master sergeant on the subject of peeling potatoes, made a tactical adjustment and successfully completed Officers’ Candidate School, remaining an officer in the USAF for twenty-four years.
A born linguist, George was selected to work in communications, and was stationed in a very hush-hush situation in Landstühl, Germany when he met the love of his life, the beautiful Ilse. The two years he spent convincing her (in multiple languages) to marry him paid off big: George and Ilse wed in Münich and went on to be happily stationed in places as far-ranging as Bangkok, Thailand; Tehran, Iran; and Snakespring Township, Pennsylvania, where their first daughter, Julie, was born.
George went to some trouble to downplay his contributions to the Air Force throughout his life — but he was sent on a tour (unaccompanied) to Thule, Greenland, learning exactly how many layers of underwear a man needs while tormenting the Russians during the Cold War, 1,200 kilometers north of the Arctic Circle. Shortly after this, he was stationed at the Cheyenne Mountain Complex in Colorado, where he oversaw the construction and installation of the comms system at NORAD (and proved instrumental in fathering his second daughter, Nicole), and subsequently supervised the modernization of the communications system at the White House while obtaining his Master of Business Administration degree from The George Washington University in DC. George also advised the Royal Thai Air Force, and was an advisor to the Shah and the Imperial Iranian Task Force — and after retiring from the military, returned to Iran with his family as a consultant until the fall of the Shah’s regime, then continued consulting in the DC area until finally retiring from civilian work and moving to Texas with Ilse.
George may have been most well-known for two things: his unconditional love for his family, and his unconditional love for sports: if it had a ball in it, George could play it. Or watch it. For hours. George bicycled competitively until he was almost 90 years old, and played basketball and racquetball with more passion and smack-talking than Jordan and Miller during Game 4 of the 1998 Eastern Conference Finals. He was a faithful fan of the Giants (football and baseball) for nine decades, and if either team failed to make their respective playoffs, was known to watch a tape of one of their past wins instead of the actual playoffs.
Most of all, George loved his family and friends; once you were on his team, you were never benched. He was unfailingly kind, and though instantly willing to cage-fight a bad driver on the road, could spend patient hours teaching his young daughters to properly throw a baseball. He was a natural raconteur, and loved to be in the center of the action at a party, in his Air Force mess dress, holding a cigar and telling a good story, but he absolutely adored being with Ilse, Julie, and Nicole on a beach somewhere in the Gulf of Siam all day, just the four of them, playing in the blue water.
A widower in his last half-decade, he never stopped being madly in love with Ilse. But nothing made him so happy as spending time doing anything at all with his daughters, his beloved son-in-law Bill, his extraordinary grandchildren Nicholas and Elizabeth, and his cousins. His generosity, warmth, empathy, and ever-feisty, playful, indomitable spirit will be mourned and sorely missed by all of them, and by his wide and loyal circle of friends.
