John's Eulogy - Learn By Doing

Learn By Doing

You can't get Life Experience if You Do Not Live

I was fifteen and a half.  As all the Harrer boys, I had been saving my money for a car.  Dad liked auctions.  We were at the County auction as we were most every year.  It was Billy’s year to get a car.  Tom had gotten one the year before.  Mine turn would come next year.  Bill had a budget, found his car, and gave Dad the money to bid on it for him.  Sold. Dad and I sat there watching the rest of the cars move through the auctioneer’s gavel.  He asks, “What do you think of this one?”  I was 15, anything with tires and a steering wheel looked great.  Next thing I know he bid on and bought that car with the stipulation I pay him back before my sixteenth birthday.  Painful but doable.  When it was finally mine he gave me a gas credit card mainly for emergencies, but we could use it, again with a stipulation – the bill gets paid in full at the end of each month.

Things went along well for about six months when, despite the fact gas prices were under fifty cents a gallon, I managed to charge ninety dollars in gasoline.  I was studying when he walked in my room and said, “Here’s you gas bill.  It’s ninety bucks”.

My jaw dropped!  I had not kept track.  “How much?!  Ninety!  I..I don’t have it.” 

“Okay, I need the card back. Pay me what you can, and the rest I’ll take in installments.”  Nothing else was said.

Three months later I left the check for the final installment quietly on his desk – proud it was paid off – ashamed I had done it in the first place.  Later that evening he walked into my room and said, “Here’s your credit card back.”

“Oh, no.  I don’t want to have anything to do with that.  I learned my lesson”

“Not quite.  You learned how to use it the wrong way.  Now learn how to use it the right way,” he placed the card in my hand turned and left.

That’s the way he taught us – by example.  Always right there in the trenches with us.  Even these last two months.  On every day I was with him, we never failed to share a smile or a laugh together.  Even at the darkest times.  He was teaching.  By example.  We were in the trenches together. Preparing me for the last and most difficult chapter.  The chapter that doesn’t include rubbing his shoulders, hearing his voice, or sharing a game of 5-straight.

Thanks, Dad, for being a father and setting the best example for what a man is supposed to be.  For being a business partner and showing me how integrity spills out beyond family.  For being a friend and sharing tennis and dancing and even doctor’s appointments.  For encouraging me to never stop learning something new. 

You gave me the greatest life a boy could ever hope for.  Good-bye, Dad.