Harry was chiseled beyond belief from the waist up & his arms & his grip were as strong as an ox!
My uncle, Harry Walter Juers, would have been 83 a week ago, on March 5th.
Harry was an amazing man, & his oldest son, Michael, posted something poignant on his Facebook page that I wanted to share… sorry Michael, I had to do it!
I paraphrased where necessary, but Michael has such a deeper perspective on the daily (& the more complete) life of his father, that I thought it’d be nice to have this here…
I hope everyone can appreciate the life & character of Harry by reading Michael’s brief post… although we know, there’s so much more to Harry. We hope some more can be added here to celebrate his life. Thanks, Michael.
~ from Michael Juers, Facebook post 03/05/2013
Today [Harry] would’ve been 83. To know [Harry] didn’t necessarily mean to know him.
Yes, he told you straight up what was wrong with you (how’d you think he got the name “Grumpy”, instead of grandpa?!). But what he didn’t tell you is how hard & full of pain his life was. He contracted polio at 5 years old & practically lived in the New York City Hospital for Special Surgery, until age 16.
[Harry] had 10’s of dozens of operations on his legs. They removed entire muscles from one leg, [to move it] to the other, when that particular muscle died from the polio. He was happy to be where he was, and not in an iron lung. He could walk… no more wheel chair or crutch!
He told me how he once went to the hospital roof & climbed 20 feet up a flag pole (while the nurses were screaming at him) and did a pole “flag” stance; this is where you hold the pole, arms 3 feet apart and “lift” your entire body parallel to the ground, perpendicular to the pole. Dad had a 72 inch chest then!!
He told me once in the later part of his life , that he was not agnostic (as I believed) but was mad at God for not answering his many prayers to take away the pain.
Our lives are a blink for the Lord. When I was in his hospital room, after he “died” (or coded, or whatever you want to call it), he told me, “It didn’t hurt to die.” I told him ‘Yes, Dad’; That when he died in the rehab place , he knew he was no longer living. He knew, because it didn’t hurt anymore. I took it to mean, literally, that it didn’t hurt to [physically] die.
What he [actually] meant was, that when he was not alive any more, it did not hurt! Thank you, Lord, for your Holy Word! That there will be no more tears & no more pain! He told me he also knew when he was “brought back”, because he felt that old familiar pain again. But He KNEW. And a loving God has given him the opportunity to join Him forever!!
Need some more? ask me anything….. I’ll try to explain my Heavenly Father and my dad…’
Thanks for sharing this Michael, & yes we’ll need some more. So there’ll be questions, and if you’re willing & gracious enough to answer them for us, we’d be grateful, because we all loved your dad, too… 🙂
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