Thomas W. Lauer

Thomas Wesley Lauer, 77, was born in Ann Arbor, Michigan on December 18, 1944 to Donald and Margaret Read Lauer. He died on April 25, 2022 in his home in Beverly Hills, Michigan in the presence of his loving family. Tom was married on September 7, 1969 to Rita Lauer (née Bern). They had five children. Tom was a professor of Management Information Systems at Oakland University, where he taught from 1985. Tom was preceded in death by his son Gato and is survived by his wife Rita, his children Ilon (Anne), James (Anna), Justine, and Alex, his grand-children Henry and Dahlia, and his brothers Tad, Bob, and David.
Tom Lauer, collector of books, ceramics, watches, and most importantly, friends, was widely known as a warm and witty prankster. He had many eclectic interests and was a lover of card-games, art, music, cheese, wine, food, France, baseball, basketball, pu-erh tea, and Yak Milk. Of Tom's many achievements, he was particularly proud of his family, his purportedly 90 MPH fastball, learning the tango, the founding of SurPriSe (Surveillance, Privacy, Security) Institute at Oakland University, and practicing Buddhism for 50 years.
Tom was a brilliant and talented thinker, who was interested in dialogue, strange coincidences, language and communication, privacy, and security. As a youth, he could play the Bach cello suites and became a professional card player and Bridge life-master by age 18. His academic degrees can only demonstrate his breadth of knowledge to a limited extent. He majored in Math and French as an Undergraduate, acquired two Masters degrees-one in public administration and another Masters degree in Business Administration-and ultimately earned his Ph.D. in Decision Sciences, with a focus in cognitive psychology. As a creative and innovative thinker who balanced an analytical and creative approach to ideas, Tom enjoyed examining relationships between seemingly disconnected concepts. Despite all of this, Tom's wide-ranging intellectual interests cannot be fully conveyed in an obituary.
Tom spent the bulk of his life in Bloomington Indiana, Albuquerque New Mexico, and the Detroit Metropolitan area. He was born in Ann Arbor, but moved to Bloomington Indiana, following his father's acceptance of a position as a professor of Psychology at Indiana University. He lived in Bloomington on and off for the next 30 years and maintained a connection to it throughout his life, regularly visiting family, friends, and attending the Lotus Music Festival. Bloomington in the 50s and 60s was considered to be the Harvard of the Midwest and Tom's youth was surrounded by Nobel Laureates and world-famous academics and musicians. Tom enjoyed the intellectual cultural life of Bloomington, however he was never fully comfortable with the elitism that so often accompanies higher education. He was most interested in the lessons taught at the school of life. Tom was heavily influenced by the year he spent in Paris, France as a teenager. There he became fluent in French and witnessed Maurice Papon's tanks roll through its streets, during the Paris massacre of 1961. He was drafted into the army and served in Fort Hood as a medic during the Vietnam war. Nevertheless, he was a committed opponent of that conflict and all war. After his service, he moved back to Bloomington to complete his undergraduate studies and it was there that he met Rita Bern and started dating her in 1967.
After graduating from college, Tom and Rita moved to Albuquerque and lived there throughout the 70s. It was there that he developed a love for Hatch Chile, posole, the mountains, desert, and glorious Southwest sunsets. In Albuquerque, Tom became an SGI Buddhist. After joining the SGI in 1972, he assumed many positions of responsibility in that organization and assiduously practiced Buddhism for the rest of his life. He enthusiastically introduced people of all walks of life to the practice of Buddhism and found tremendous joy watching them as they developed their own lives through their practice. Over the course of his 50 years as a Buddhist, he developed an inseparable bond with his mentor, SGI president Daisaku Ikeda and read hundreds of his books, speeches, and other writings.
After a brief return to Bloomington to earn his Ph.D., Tom moved his family to the Detroit metropolitan area in 1985. Remaining fond of Bloomington and Albuquerque, he ultimately became an advocate for all things Detroit related and determined Michigan was his true home. He was a proud member of the Bagel Group for 19 years. In 2006, Tom and Rita purchased a modest cottage in Bayfield Canada. It was there he developed a love for Canadian ceramics and the accessible and welcoming Canadian art scene. Tom cultivated many life-long friends as an arts patron and frequently visited Jonathan Bancroft-Snell Gallery, a noted ceramics gallery in London Ontario. He and Rita spent many precious hours at their cottage together, skipping stones, eating smoked fish, cherishing the Bayfield sunsets, and watching the storms roll across Lake Huron.
Tom had a great love of travel and was able to visit many places in North America, Europe, Japan, Australia, and India. He has cherished memories of traveling throughout Europe, visiting many of its great cities including Vienna, Budapest, Prague, Barcelona, Copenhagen, Berlin, Zurich, Geneva and of course Paris. He took his family on wonderful trips to Scotland and Ireland, where he was able to sip Guinness in Dublin and scotch in Islay. He and Rita wandered throughout many of Canada's Provinces including British Columbia, Quebec, Ontario, New Brunswick, and Nova Scotia. He journeyed to Nicaragua where he visited the homes and studios of many of its outstanding potters and where he was able to collect some of their beautiful work. His last trip, right before his diagnosis, was a final return to Paris, where he happily revisited many sites of his youth with his family including his grandchildren.
He studied and taught technology, but was always frustrated by his own personal computers and television. Seriously, he was always interested in the human side of technology. Tom loved dogs, despite his own self-professed annoyance with them and with family who incessantly told stories about their own dogs. And to his own surprise, he developed a strong bond with his cat Mac. He became a bridge life-master as a teenager, but his wife always beat him in gin and he never taught his kids how to play bridge. Even though he was a professor, he never believed in grades and always referred to them as "an index of conformity." Before teaching his classes, he would regularly announce to his fellow professors that he was about to "go tell some lies." Despite, or perhaps because of this, Tom was an accomplished teacher and scholar. In addition to traditional courses in MIS, Tom taught many different aspects of computing including cryptography, security, digital currency, block chain, and NFTs. He developed innovative courses in Security, Privacy, and IT strategy and used fiction and pop culture to teach business concepts.
Most importantly, Tom was an excellent father. He loved to introduce his children to a wide range of food and drink including scotch, wine, "gush," waffles, smoked oysters, and Le Tacos. He also loved to expose his kids to all sorts of music ranging from Afropop and avant-garde classical to Detroit techno and jazz. He was funny, kind, and committed to peace, culture, and education. He encouraged everyone to be a better version of themselves and derived his greatest pleasure helping friends and strangers to cherish their lives, become happy, and achieve their own personal goals.
A Memorial Service will be held at Lynch & Sons Funeral Home, Clawson, Saturday, April 30th at 12 Noon. Friends may visit beginning at 11am. The family requests that masks be worn. Also, a virtual memorial will be planned for a later date for out of town friends and family and anyone concerned about attending due to COVID.
In lieu of flowers, the family requests that donations be made to Steiner Health https://steinerhealth.networkforgood.com, Karmanos Cancer Foundation https://www.karmanos.org/karmanos-foundation/karmanos-foundation, or Soka University of America https://www.soka.edu/support-sua