Something was brewing that spring day nearly eight years ago when Lawrence Joseph Bader loaded fishing tackle into his car. The sky was clear, but a storm was blowing up.
His wife was four months pregnant and he hadn't paid any income taxes in five years.
He had to see about some bad checks he had been stuck with in the course of his business, which was selling kitchen appliances. And maybe, he told his wife Marylou, he would go fishing.
"Maybe I will, maybe I won't," he said.
Larry Bader was a nice guy. If he was an outdoors man-he won a tri-state archery contest and wore genuine buckskin when he went hunting-he was also a face in the crowd.
His education had some holes in it, He dropped out of high school to join the Navy. When he came back 18 months later and was graduated, he put in one semester at Akron University before going to work in a campus restaurant.
All-Around Nice Guy
A friend recalled him as a "red-blooded, beer-drinking, all-around nice guy who could talk your ear off and you'd love to sit and listen. He was a family man, too."
And a family man he was.
On that morning of May 15, 1957 , he was 30 years old. He and Marylou had three children with another on the way, and a home in the very proper West Hills neighborhood. Also a $17,000 mortgage, a $10,000-a-year income and almost $40,000 in life insurance.
He had recently boosted his life insurance clause - in case of accidental death.
When he rented a boat at the Rocky River livery near Cleveland that afternoon, the lake was calm. But storm warnings were up.
Proprietor Lawrence E. Cotleur told him about the warnings. It didn't matter. At 4:30p.m. Bader shoved off in the rented motor boat.
Boat on Rocks
The storm came up three hours later. The next morning, Bader's boat was found on the rocks at Perkins Beach. Bader was not in it. The Coast Guard said the lake had been so rough no man could have survived overboard.
Bader was gone. Authorities listed him as presumed dead. But Cotleur noticed that the gas line on his boat was disconnected. Gas lines do not accidentally become disconnected, Cotleur said.
Four days later, enter Fritz, In Omaha, Nebraska.
In fact, in the old Roundtable Bar at 19th and Harney streets, where so far as anyone can attest the man known as John (Fritz) Johnson was born. The girl behind the bar, now Mrs. Betty Augustine of Omaha, remembers the moment well.
"He was fascinating, debonair, well-dressed and not broke," she recalled. "He asked me out."
Mrs. Augustine was the first of many to be charmed by Fritz, the stranger at the Roundtable Bar, who bought an old hearse for his bachelor courting and equipped it with a coffee bar, pillow and an incense burner. The city licensed the bachelor bearse as a "hunting vehicle."
Fritz who caught the city's eye by perching on a flag pole for one solid month, became successively, a radio station announcer, sports director of a television station, and one of the best known, best liked and most flamboyant personalities in Omaha.
Wins Archery Title
One day he took up archery "to strengthen his back muscles after an injury" (he said). He won the Nebraska state championship five weeks later. He enthralled his friends with vivid stories of a boyhood in a Boston orphanage and 13 years in the Navy. He kept tropical fish -- especially the Siamese fighting variety, the kind that devour each other.
And he hated the news, Even though he broadcast it, he hated it. His favorite program at one time was called "Good News of the Day" in which Fritz spoke only of the brighter thing in life.
He was an "odd ball" but every one liked him. In 1961, he gave up his bachelor ways, and married pretty Nancy Zimmer, a 20-year-old divorcee and photographer's model. He adopted Nancy's daughter by her previous marriage and two years ago they had a son of their own.
Larry Bader was declared legally dead in an Akron court in 1960. The insurance companies paid off and the government provided the widow with Social Security payments, slightly reduced because Bader had fudged on his income tax.
Marylou Bader had already learned the life of the widow. She took off her wedding ring and out it away. And she settled down to the business of trying to rear four children alone.
Then Fritz Johnson, archer extraordinary, came east to Chicago. A Nebraska archery firm sent him to a sports show at Chicago's McCormick Place to show off its equipment.
Sees Dead Ringer
There he was, flexing his bows and chatting with the people a week ago last Friday, when a man from Akron did a double take. He had, he was sure, just seen a dead ringer for the missing Larry Bader.
The man called Bader's brothers from Akron. They flew into Chicago, took a look at Fritz and said he was their long lost brother. No doubt about it.
Fritz said no. He was never in Akron. He didn't know who the two strangers were. Would he be fingerprinted? Why sure, he said.
Chicago police relayed Fritz' fingerprints to the Federal Bureau of Investigation, which compared them with Bader's Navy fingerprints. No doubt about it, the FBI said.
Fritz went back to Omaha and hired a lawyer. He didn't remember a thing about it, he said. The lawyer explained that Fritz recently had an operation to remove a tumor in his head. Maybe his memory was affected, the attorney said.
Fritz went into the hospital for mental and physical tests. He was still there today. From his room during the weekend came the announcement that since he must assume he is still married to Marylou Bader, he and Nacy will live apart for the time being.
In Akron, marylou was quoted as saying she was married in the Roman Catholic church and "the church doesn't recognize divorce." She "wants a father for these kids," her attorney said.
Sunday, Marylou told the Akron Beacon Journal in a copyright interview that the news a dead ringer for Larrdy Bader had been found in the person of Fritz Johnson hit her "like shellshock."
"I haven't been able to think clearly since then," she said.
She said she would like to go to Omaha when the time is right. Asked what she thought such a visit would accomplish, she answered: "I'm not saying right now, but I would like to go, yes."
