Richard Allen Bachmann

Richard Allen Bachmann, 70, died unexpectedly at his home in Orchard Beach, Maryland on February 5, 2025 with his wife, Allison, beside him.

 Rich never would have described himself as a Renaissance Man, but he was. It’s not just that he was knowledgeable and proficient in a wide range of fields, it was that he always wanted to know more about – or become adept at – anything that captivated him. 

An engineer by training, Rich was so much more than his job, diploma, schooling and upbringing, even as all of those things shaped him. 

Rich was born July 7, 1954, in Little Rock, Ark., to Raphael Otto Bachmann and Mary Eleanor Mather Bachmann, the youngest of three siblings. The family moved to Morgantown, W.V., when Rich was six and his father joined the faculty of West Virginia University; Rich attended the St. Francis School, graduating in 1972, and earned his Bachelor of Science in Electrical Engineering, cum laude, from WVU in 1976. 

Rich joined Westinghouse in Linthicum, Md., as a field engineer later that year and remained with the company -- it morphed into Northrop Grumman -- until retiring as senior advisory engineer in 2014. Beyond many continuing education courses in his field, Rich earned his master’s in science from Johns Hopkins Whiting School of Engineering in 1984. 

In 1977-78, Rich worked as a field engineer in Iran and was able to visit Nepal, Thailand, and London. He was evacuated with all the Westinghouse employees from Tehran in 1978 less than a year before hostages were taken from the American Embassy there. Upon returning to Maryland he bought a little Cape Cod and settled down in Orchard Beach, only to be sent in 1980 to Ellsworth Air Force Base in Rapid City, S.D. 

That’s where he met Allison. They became close as his three-month assignment was extended; after almost a year, he asked if she would come to Baltimore to see if she would like living there. She said she would move to Baltimore to be with him whether she liked it or not.

 After a brief detour for an assignment on an Air Force base in upstate New York, they returned to his little house on Stoney Creek, a tributary of the Patapsco and a great place to fish and put in their little sail boats, aluminum canoe, and kayaks. He learned to fly fish, scuba dive and scull and would carry his rowing shell down to the creek in the early morning when the water was calm. He built a wooden kayak from a kit but bought a light tandem kayak for Allison to paddle with him or go out on her own. He also bought a road bike; while he only ever rode it once in a race, he often rode it to and from work, a distance of 13 miles each way. 

Rich had an entrepreneurial spirit, frequently thinking about the businesses he could start around the things he loved. He was nuts for pistachios, for example, and once he discovered that a license to sell them would let him buy at wholesale prices, he started a weekend roadside side gig, selling nuts of all kinds by the pound. In anticipation of what his business could become he printed stationery with the versatile letterhead, “Bachmann Supply: Quality, Integrity & Prompt Service.” 

His interests were varied. He mastered the perfect martini and loved to cook and eat interesting foods. He enjoyed riding motorcycles as a young man and still had several at his death, including the battery operated one he built in college. As a young teenager, he enjoyed his dad's ham radio and collected QSL cards from other operators that he talked to all over the world. He learned Morse Code as an adult and, in the early 90s, he joined the Maryland Mobiliers Amateur Radio Club. He had short wave radios of all kinds. When his young niece was taking French, they were able to listen in to a French station together. He was a collector of old things and was nostalgic for all of them, the beautiful and the mundane. 

In true engineer fashion, Rich wanted to know how seemingly everything worked. His knowledge was extensive about wines, guns, cameras, car maintenance, and anything electronic. Sometimes his desire for perfection precluded his finishing projects promptly (or at all) but every step was done with quality and integrity. 

In retirement, Rich was a homebody, watching container ships pass the mouth of the creek, photographing them, and tracking their origins and destinations. He worked as a tax preparer, because he liked the challenge; it was Rich’s form of doing jigsaw puzzles. He loved lunches and Happy Hour Wednesdays with friends, managing his investments and learning about the stock market – his favorite investment podcaster became his pen pal -- and staying connected with old friends, taking breaks to indulge his eclectic movie tastes, from sci-fi and film noir to romantic comedies and Jane Austen. 

Rich is survived by his wife, Allison Hoover Bachmann, his sisters Linda Bachmann Becker (John) of Orlando, Fla., and Carolyn Bachmann Miller (Steven) of Cranberry Township, Pa. He was a loving uncle to Jennifer Miller Jury, Benjamin Miller, Allison Miller Arno, Michael Hoover, Rachel Ward Graves, and Colton Hoover, and their children. Rich had close childhood relationships with his aunts, uncles and cousins, and loved reconnecting at family reunions; his special place was the Indiana lakeside home of his Aunt Dorothy. 

Rich was preceded in death by his three previous owners: Boogie, Omni and Bob, his cats. 

Rich loved a good bargain, but he wasn’t stingy with his money, his time, his knowledge or his love; he lived life his way, without compromising his values. 

Flowers would have been wasted on Rich, but he would have been honored if you did something tangible in his memory with the American Heart Association (www.heart.org) or a charity dear to your heart. 

A Memorial Service will be held at Singleton Funeral & Cremation Services on Saturday, May 31st at 3 PM. Family and friends may gather at the funeral home from 2-3 pm, prior to the service.