CHEEKTOWAGA
Woman envisions tributes for a wounded son, and for Father Baker
A Cheektowaga mother of a once-critically wounded soldier — whom she now describes as a living miracle thanks to Father Nelson Baker — is leading the charge to honor both service members and the would-be saint.
Margie Hauser’s son, Army Spc. Michael D. Hauser, has struggled to overcome an injury to the right side of his brain that occurred with it was pierced with shrapnel last year. Hauser said she is so moved by her son’s the struggles that she wants all service members from Cheektowaga dating back to the First Gulf War to be recognized on a Wall of Honor.
Hauser also says her prayers to Father Baker for her son’s recovery continue to be answered, and therefore she has contacted officials in the Catholic Church to help in the movement to make Father Baker a saint.
Hauser says it would be nice if current and former service members from her hometown received some earthly honors.
“Michael and others laid their life on the line and deserve to be put on a Wall of Honor for what they did,” Hauser said Sunday. “The town supervisor has given approval and wants us to collect the names of all who have served since Desert Storm to the present.”
Cheektowaga Supervisor Mary F. Holtz says she fully supports the Wall of Honor.
“It’s a phenomenal idea, and our biggest concern is what size and how many who have served,” Holtz said. “We’d like to have plaques put up with the names and emblem designating the branch of service.”
She urged residents to contact her office or the Hausers with information on current and former service members.
Meanwhile, the deeply religious Hauser insists a miracle happened about 10 days ago, and she attributes it to Father Baker.
She and her husband, Raymond, had gone to Father Baker’s gravesite in Lackawanna, scooped up dirt and placed it in a medicine bottle. When they returned home, she rolled up a photograph of her 24-year-old son and placed it inside the bottle.
Later that day, Michael, who now lives in off-base housing near Fort Lewis in Washington State, called after his routine physical therapy to say he had moved his left arm straight up into the air for the first time since he was wounded.
“It’s the miracle that I have been continuing to pray for every single night,” Margie Hauser said. “When I was with Michael at Walter Reed Army Medical Center last December, a doctor there told us he would never again have feeling on his entire left side. The doctor showed us the CT scan with shrapnel in his head and said he was ‘100 percent sure.’ ”
But since then, the soldier walks on his left leg with the help of a cane and now has moved his left arm.
With this latest progress, she says she has obtained paperwork from Our Lady of Victory Basilica in Lackawanna requesting that she write out the names of the doctors involved in her son’s recovery, so that church officials can investigate whether a miracle has occurred.
Hauser is asking the public to help her in honoring Cheektowaga service members.
Anyone with information on individuals current military personnel or veterans should contact her at 634-7464.
