Tragedy at Sea: The searchers speak. "The thing that kept us going was that we wanted to give the family some closure”
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massive search of the waters off False Cape State Park near Norfolk, Virginia, involving nearly 100 volunteers and bolstered by hundreds of thousands of tefillos, ended in grief Sunday, five days after a heroic local rebbi jumped into the turbulent waves to save a camper from drowning.
The body of Rabbi Reuven Bauman z”l, who was described by members of the close-knit Norfolk kehillah as a deeply beloved community leader, was pulled out of the water about 300 feet from the shore, some eight miles from the isolated beach where he had first entered the sea.
Shimon Neuman, the coordinator of the Monsey-based Community Search and Rescue group, known by its acronym CommSAR, told Mishpacha that the discovery of Rabbi Bauman’s body was a solemn moment for the searchers, some of whom had spent days looking for the grade-school teacher.
“The thing that kept us going was that we wanted to give the family some closure,” Neuman said. “The feeling among the searchers was one of relief, on the one hand, that the family is now able to have a levayah and bring him to kevuras Yisrael. But it was also a vivid reminder of the family’s grief.”
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