Sergeant Robert Kaulfers

Port Authority Police Sergeant Robert Kaulfers, forty-nine, was at the PATH bureau in Hoboken, New Jersey, when the call came through about the World Trade Center attacks. Reports vary, but it is believed he was last seen at the South Tower. After graduating from Trenton (New Jersey) State College in 1975, Kaulfers was an investigator for the Bergen County (New Jersey) Prosecutor’s Office’s Narcotics Task Force. In 1979 he became a facility operations agent. He was promoted to sergeant in January 1996 and was assigned to the bus terminal in New York City and the PATH train. Kaulfers was known for his wit, his loyalty, and his songwriting and singing talents, which he displayed at fellow officers’ retirement parties. According to Port Authority Police Inspector Timothy Norris, Kaulfers was the most popular sergeant on the force. He was married to Cookie for twenty-five years and they had two children, Timothy and Meredith. PORTRAITS OF GRIEF, THE NEW YORK TIMES “Bob was a Minstrel” Men and women of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, friends and family members: soon, the famed lyrics of Sgt. Robert M. Kaulfers may be available. These are the tunes you know and love from retirement parties, wedding receptions and slow days on the job. Take it from Sgt. Mark O’Neill: “Bob was a minstrel.” You’ll get “The Hat,” the famous ode to Officer Mike Barry, set to the tune of the theme from The Cat in the Hat, and “Carnevale Time,” the paean to Lt. Mike Carnevale. And who could forget the tribute to Sgt. Bernard M. Poggioli, a world-renowned expert on runaway children, “I’m Much Taller Than Poggioli?” Many of the lyrics were found in Sergeant Kaulfers’s locker. His wife, Cookie, thinks she may soon be strong enough to go through his papers at home to meet requests for the other songs. “I would hear him in the shower singing and laughing to himself,” she remembered. Sergeant Kaulfers, 49, also found time to study world history, keep the rookies on the right path and raise two children. His friends said he never held a grudge; perhaps the best evidence of that was his 25-year marriage to the girl who beat him in the election for sixth-grade class president.