The Military Was One Facet of Christopher E. Hornbarger ’90

As befitting a man who loved a thorough plan, a couple of years before his death, Lt. Col. Christopher E. Hornbarger ’90 compiled “The Daddy Ownership Manual.” Housed in a three-ring binder, complete with tabs, the guide included his preference of casket and thoughts on mausoleums.

Hornbarger, the son of a West Point grad, didn’t wish to be buried in Arlington National Cemetery. He wanted to be buried in a mausoleum in Watertown, New York, so he could eventually lay next to his wife, Beth, the mother of their three children.

Trained as a Cobra attack helicopter pilot, Hornbarger retired from the Army in 2010 after a 20-year career took him to Korea, Somalia, and the White House and earned him such honors as the Bronze Star Medal and Combat Action Badge.

The military, though, was only one facet of Hornbarger.

“Chris was a brilliant dude in many ways — visual artist, music, academics,” says Jason Camillos ’90, who met Hornbarger freshman year. Hornbarger once opened for legendary folk guitarist Jorma Kaukonen at an eating club. (Camillos’ review: “He killed it.”) He concocted delicious dinners based on whatever he scrounged from the kitchen, Beth Hornbarger recalls.

Alex Bocock ’90 says Hornbarger, who attended Princeton on an Army ROTC scholarship, was perhaps the smartest person he knew at school. Camillos remembers a professor in a Buddhism class proclaiming Hornbarger’s paper the best he had ever read.

“We were all chuckling,” Camillos says, “because Chris probably wrote that in a night.”

Growing up in Melrose, Massachusetts, Hornbarger was chided by the crossing guard for reading as he walked to school. The intellectual curiosity came with rigor and precision. “Chris was very, very attention-to-detail-oriented; he was about standards; he was about the team being trained and ready,” says retired Capt. Ernie Bueno, who served with Hornbarger at Fort Drum, New York.

When Hornbarger wrote evaluations, “He could write a book about any individual,” Bueno adds. “He had such a superb memory and such a way with words. It was a gift for him.”

Army life exacted a mental and physical toll, his wife says. He battled bipolar disorder. The threat of death hovered. Hornbarger was at work in the the Pentagon when it was attacked on Sept. 11, 2001. When he was stationed in Iraq, Beth talked to her husband as missiles whistled in the background.

Retirement allowed him to finally focus on family. The Hornbargers settled in Watertown, New York, Beth’s hometown, where he became the executive system administrator of her high school, Immaculate Heart Central School. Hornbarger loved everything about being a dad, his wife says, whether it was reviewing homework, organizing a hike, or extolling an article he had read in National Geographic.

When Hornbarger took a job with the Department of Veterans Affairs at the San Francisco VA Health Care System in 2016, he worked from home and, eventually, settled into a life with Beth as empty nesters.

Every day at 5 p.m., he’d call her at work and ask what she wanted for dinner. On the day he died of a heart attack, that call never came. Beth tried her husband’s cell and felt sick.

Hornbarger’s time at Princeton swelled with promise. His time in the military saw it fulfilled, but “family,” his wife says, “was everything to him.”

Pete Croatto is a freelance journalist based just outside Ithaca, New York.