George E. Sauer --- Rocket Scientist
d. September 29, 2010

George Edward Sauer was born on June 6th 1934 in Washington,DC, the first child of Nellie Evelyn Fouche and Herman Adolph Sauer. The family moved to Silver Spring, Maryland in 1939. He attended East Silver Spring Elementary, Silver Spring Intermediate, and Montgomery Blair High Schools. He was awarded a Maryland Senatorial Scholarship to St. John's College in Annapolis. That and Governor Theodore R. McKeldin influenced him to join the Republican Party.

Upon graduation he went to work at the National Security Agency where he learned to program computers. He joined the Naval Reserve and was called to Active Duty during the Suez and Hungary crises. He was selected for OCS and was commissioned an Ensign in Newport, Rhode Island in 1957. Upon finishing his enlistment in the Navy he joined the IBM Space Center and Project Mercury. He was assigned to the Bermuda Station for two years. After experiencing the political and economic climate in Bermuda in the 1960s, he said he then understood what Karl Marx was writing about in the 1860s.

After moving to Potomac in 1964, George became President of his neighborhood civic association and then President of the Montgomery County Civic Federation. In 1974 he was nominated by the Republicans for the House of Delegates but lost the General Election. In 1986 he was asked to fill the slate for County Council but lost the General Election. He ran three more times At-Large, to keep the Democrats honest, he said. He was elected seven times At-Large to the Republican Central Committee, leading the ticket in 1990 and 1998. During this time he was active in the Kiwanis with perfect attendance most years. He attended several Baptist churches over the years. He married Wilma Sarah Bien in 1959 and they had four children. He is survived by his wife Wilma, Julia Carol Sauer of Santa Cruz, California, Martha Brown of Oak Hills, California, Benjamin Sauer of London, England, United Kingdom, and Jennifer Silvertree of Potomac, Maryland. He is also survived by his sisters Katherine McGuirk and Charlotte Drummond, his brother Arthur Sauer, and five grandchildren.

In the spirit of research and furthering medical knowledge, George donated his brain to the Parkinson’s Disease Research Center at Johns Hopkins.