Eli Klausner survived 9/11 and overcame cancer. He died of COVID-19 while visiting NC.

When Eli Klausner died, his bank teller cried.

That’s because Klausner, a native New Yorker, didn’t know a stranger. He was loved and known by name at the restaurants he frequented. And as the news about his death trickled out, his children even got calls from their father’s dry cleaners. More than 100 people gathered virtually for his Zoom memorial service.

“It makes you feel nice to know that you weren’t the only one to love your dad,” said his oldest daughter, Jennifer Cramer. “Everybody else did too.”

Klausner, 64, died April 13 at Duke Raleigh Hospital, nearly two weeks after he tested positive for COVID-19.

The father of three and grandfather of four had survived 9/11. He was supposed to be in the World Trade Center for an early morning meeting that day, but he skipped it because he was out late the night before at Yankee Stadium.

He overcame kidney cancer and several mini strokes, and he lived with Type II diabetes. He made it out of New York City just as the novel coronavirus began to spread. But despite his narrow escape from one of the cities COVID-19 hit the hardest, the virus caught up with Klausner anyway.

“If he didn’t have COVID-19, he’d still be walking around,” his son, Jared Klausner, said. “The fact of the matter is that he had a lot of underlying conditions as well.”

His final days

Klausner’s children suspect their father was infected with COVID-19 during a work trip in mid-March. He was the owner of a telecommunications business and had traveled to a university police station in the Southeast to install a voice recorder. His children said there was an outbreak there, but declined to identify the university.

Cramer, his oldest, begged him not to go back to New York after the trip. He obliged.

When Klausner made it to North Carolina on March 27th, he was feeling fine but had a low-grade fever. He was tested at Duke Raleigh for COVID-19, and days later, he got the result: Positive.

Klausner stayed in a hotel across the street from Duke Raleigh. After his two weeks of quarantining were up, he planned to stay with Cramer and her husband and children until it was safe to go home.

Jared predicts if he was still alive, he’d probably be making plans to settle down in North Carolina for good.

While Klausner holed up at the Extended Stay, his children dropped off supplies, including food, an Amazon Fire Stick and, per his request, candy. They would talk to him from the parking lot, while he stood on the balcony.

The last time Klausner spoke with his son in person, he was joking and laughing, “which was usually his way,” Jared said.

This time, he joked about how the Raleigh cop cars are painted.

“‘Half white and half blue? What’d they do, get bored halfway through and stop painting them blue?’” Jared recalled his father saying.

On the evening of April 2, Klausner’s children noticed he didn’t seem like himself. He was rushed to the hospital, where he stayed for 11 days.

His kidneys were shutting down. Hospital staff placed him on dialysis and blood thinners. But Klausner was tough.

“There were times when we thought he was going to come out of it,” Jared said.

Hospital staff assured Klausner’s children that in their father’s final days, he was not alone.

“I hold his hand,” Cramer said a nurse told her. “I’m here with him.”

Many facets

Klausner was the kind of person who would give you the shirt off his back. Or pick you up at the airport. Or let you crash at his place if you needed somewhere to stay.

“If you were a friend of ours, you were a friend of his,” Cramer said. “If you were family of ours, you were family of his.”

The Long Island native had the entire New York City subway map in his head. You could call him anytime if you were lost.

Cramer fondly remembers her time spent in the city with her dad, when he would take her to his work and to get pizza.

“When you’re a little girl and you’re with your dad, and he’s 6-foot-4, and you’re itty bitty, you’re like, ‘Ah, I want to live in the city when I grow up,’” Cramer said.

His children and grandchildren traveled to him every Thanksgiving, and he came to North Carolina every Christmas.

“He was the only Jew I knew that liked Christmas more than anything else,” Cramer recalled.

He was both the life of the party and deeply devoted to his grandchildren.

“We’ve never seen any parent or grandparent that devoted to their children’s Jewish education,” the rabbi told everyone during the virtual memorial service.

But there’s so much more to Klausner that can’t fit in just one newspaper article, his son said.

“There are so many facets to that rough cut diamond,” Jared said.

The News & Observer wants to tell the stories of North Carolina residents who have died from the coronavirus. Email jdjackson@newsobserver.com or call 919-829-4707 and leave a message.

This story was originally published May 7, 2020 at 2:26 PM.

Lucille Sherman

The News & Observer

Lucille Sherman is a state politics reporter for The News & Observer and The Herald-Sun. She previously worked as a national data and investigations reporter for Gannett. Using the secure, encrypted Signal app, you can reach Lucille at 405-471-7979.