Friday, November 28, 2014
I met Harry in 1995 but we didn't become good friends until 2000 when our initial bonding resulted from a shared dislike of a particular politician. Harry would email me the funniest things about that one! When I visited he would play his big band and subsequent era tapes and CDs for me. He showed me a letter from the late '20's from a grandfather about a little boy's visit. The little boy was Hobart and that's when I learned what his middle initial "H" stood for. He loved animals and even when he shouldn't have been doing so anymore, would walk down a few icy steps in the snow to his backyard to feed his deer family that came regularly to visit. He loved chocolate and fried chicken, and walks with his dogs until he could no longer do so. But above all he loved his wife Jane, who I had the pleasure to meet briefly before she left us. In all the years following Jane's death that I knew Harry, he always talked about her and their dog show days, her playing the organ at church and other fond memories. He told me how they met and gave me a copy of the song he wrote for her on the train over Thanksgiving break in 1946. He had just met her and he was afraid that when he returned after break she wouldn't remember him. He kept Jane's lemon tree alive in her memory and more than once called me with great concern that something might happen to the tree if we didn't get it inside, or outside, or water it in the draught-- whatever it needed--right away. We talked about old times and we talked about current politics. Harry was kind and funny too beneath his gruff exterior. He will be missed.
