Obituary of John Leer

John Rudolph Leer passed away at University Of Alberta Hospital, Edmonton, Alberta on Saturday, May 8, 2021 at the age of 82 years.

John is survived by: his loving wife of 53 years, Jeanette ; daughter, Jana (Kent) Thompson and their children, Katelynn (Brandon) Kendel and Austin Thompson (Emily); son, Jason Leer and his two daughters, Brienna and Brooklyn; great grandson, Maverick Kendel; mother-in-law, Masardy Wiltermuth; sisters, Tillie (Bill) McLeod, Annette (Geordie) McKenzie and Diann Tippe (Ed); sisters-in-law, Deanna Sharp, Yvonne (Kevin) Pike, Denny (Robert) Friday, Loretta Leer, Judy Leer and Vi Leer; and numerous nieces and nephews.

John was predeceased by: his parents, Frank and Clara Leer; brothers, Ben Leer, Lavern Leer and Ken Leer; brothers-in-law, Vaughn Sharp and Mel Tippe; and father-in-law, Joe Wiltermuth. 

A private family service in memory of John will be held. 

Donations in memory of John may be made to STARS or donor's charity of choice.

John's memorial card can be viewed or downloaded from the link below.

https://indd.adobe.com/view/c524668b-7aec-490a-8c19-4c75c5c0bec1
 

~ Eulogy ~ 

John Rudolph Leer or Huntz as his mom called him. 

Dad, how to put your life into a few short words, it’s an impossible task.  But you never liked things to be too much or flashy so we will keep it simple just how you wanted. Dad was born in Butte St. Pierre on August 11, 1938 to Frank and Clara Leer.

Growing up at Butte St. Pierre with his parents and 6 other siblings (Tillie, Ben, Lavern, Annette, Ken and Diann) made for a busy farm and house.  They worked hard on the farm and had to work together to get things done.  The day started early and ended late by the time they did chores before and after school.  He loved working with his brothers and with horses.  He appreciated his sisters and how they helped looked after the family.  It wasn’t always work; there was time for fun as well.  Dad loved playing ball, hockey on the sloughs, track and field, playing cards and visiting neighbors as a kid.  Dad was very competitive and very good at all sports he played.   He finished school early around grade 8 and went to work on the farm and worked as a hired man for Benny Hardes.  When he was in his early twenties he left home to Iowa to Auctioneering School.  He said he will never forget his mom waving goodbye with tears in her eyes as he drove off on the bus.  He auctioned only one sale, but never did lose his auctioneering talents; he proved that to us all when there was a party and at some point in the evening dad would start auctioning off random things.

He would tell us that when he was younger he would often get mistaken for Elvis Presley.  We would roll our eyes at him and joke, but in his younger years there was a resemblance. Dad did cut a record, not a signing record, but in March of 1961 when he finished auctioneering school.

He must of thought there wasn’t enough money in auctioneering that would fulfill his dreams and he went to Fort St. John to work in a saw mill with brothers Ben and Lavern.    He continued to find work in that area for quite a few years before making his way back to Lloydminster and was employed with Civic Tire.

One day Civic Tire hired a new secretary.  The story goes that his work colleague and good friend Jack Ashley bet dad to ask her out, she wouldn’t say yes.  Well the rest is history as they say they dated, got engaged and married all within a year. 

Dad was ready for a career change and was working at Banister Pipeline waiting for Lloydminster Motor Products to open where he was hired as a salesman.  Dad said he sold ski-doos, campers, mobile homes and vehicles and was good at it.  As much as he loved working at RJR Noyce and the people he met there and worked with,  his true passion was farming.

Mom and dad were married on July 14, 1967 they lived in and around Lloydminster area until 1974 when he purchased the Bill Cameron place NE of Greenstreet.  He said if he would have seeded everything to canola and sold cars in the summer he would have been able to pay for the place in one year.

Over the next 35 years he and mom worked hard on their farm with their two children Jana and Jason.  Breaking land, milking cows and separating cream, raising pigs, chickens, cattle and had a few horses.  Farming was hard and profits weren’t always there so both often had off the farm jobs.  Dad worked as a carpenter for many years with his good friend Vernon.  Together they built many projects and had fun doing it as you can imagine.  Dad would tell the story of when Greg worked with them and one afternoon it started to rain, so in packing up to go for the day they yelled at Greg to cover those shingles up so they don’t get wet and stood back and laughed as Greg hustled to cover them. 

One of his biggest projects he worked on was the building of the Cement plant at North Bend.  The crew gave him a nickname Magpie.  They said he acted like the  foreman and was always squawking like a magpie.

He enjoyed hunting with his dad, Frank. A couple of their favorite hunting spots were the Fire Guard at Ministikwan and the railroad tracks by St. Walburg.  Dad loved hunting with Jason and his nephews, his neighbors, his son in law Kent and grandson Austin.  He hunted gophers, bear, deer, moose and coyotes and would trap anything from skunks to muskrats to magpies.  Dad was one heck of a shot.  He loved fishing and nature itself.  He appreciated nature especially in his retirement.  He would often quad and park on a hill just to look around and see what he could see.  If we were with him he would say, “look at that land, I never realized how steep that ravene is, look at all the Saskatoon bushes, now what bird is that?”

He wasn’t a huge traveller but enjoyed seeing the country and the places him and mom did go and the friends they travelled with.  We had a couple of family vacations as kids.  One was when we made a trip to Fort St. John to visit Uncle Ben and family.  We were travelling through Prince George looking for a hotel as it was evening.  We would look and say “there’s one”, dad would say “there will be another, we should try and be on the outside of town so we can leave easier”.  We stopped at the last option we had it was a hotel over a bar.  It was an unbearably hot day, the room had small windows and no air conditioning.  We filled the bath tub with cold water stood in it to cool off and wet towels in the water to wipe our face.

Some things he often talked about was the years going on the Carlton Trail Ride, the mini trail rides he did with family and friends, the family Christmas Eves playing whist until all hours, the year we went sleigh riding and opening presents. He loved opening presents. The days leading up to Christmas he would try to trick us into telling him what his present from us was. He was a kid at heart.  I remember one Christmas morning, we were up early as kids usually are eager to open presents.  We were all up except Dad, he was still sleeping and tired from the card games the night before.  Mom tried getting him up, us kids tried getting him up with no luck.  Finally, Gramma Leer, his mom, marched into the bedroom and guess what Dad came out and joined us.

He enjoyed playing ball on the men’s ball team.  Playing and later coaching the young guys team called the A Team.  Many good times those years. 

He loved all sports and was game to try anything.  He tried down-hill skiing, enjoyed water skiing, in the early 70’s he raced ski doos and chariot raced.  He loved the competiveness and the fun that went with it.  I asked mom if he curled cause I couldn’t really remember him curling.  She said he did, once he went to the Farmers  Bonspiel with Lyle, Ardell, and Ed (apologies if that’s not correct) and they had way to much fun and couldn’t even finish the playing their games in the bonspiel.  And that ended curling for him.  Mom has endless stories like this, that has given her many grey hairs over the years.  He played hard and worked hard.

He enjoyed us kids in 4-H.  In 1984 I won Grand Champion and Gordon won reserve in the Lloyd Show.  Dad was so proud of his small herd of cattle being recognized as Grand Champion of the show and the best home grown calf. Well the celebration was on.  In them days whomover got grand champion hosted the party.  So after a long tiring weekend there was still energy to celebrate and I remember dad and uncle Geordie pulling into the yard with the back of the truck full of refreshments.  What a party that was.

He spent some time on the Lloydminster Pool Board and the St. Walburg Pasture Board. 

In 2008 mom and dad made the decision to retire and have an auction sale that spring.  They moved to Lloydminster that fall.  He purchased a camper and boat and spent summers at Waterhen Lake.  He enjoyed his boat and fishing and couldn’t wait for us to come up and join him. But was often happy just to go by himself.  He enjoyed sitting at the Waterhen store visiting with owner in the evenings.  He enjoyed building a fire.  He said the food always tasted better over the fire but it had to be at just the right time when the coals were perfect to cook or you would spoil it. 

He was unsure about retirement for a while, he felt he could still work and do things.  After being in Lloyd for a bit I asked him if he was ok with retirement now.  He said you know I would sit at the table with my coffee in the morning on the farm and look out the window and think of all the things I better do that day, now I don’t have to do anything if I don’t want or do exactly what I want.  Well, I said that is retirement. 

He set up camp on the farm so he could come out with his side by side and check things over.  Spend time tinkering and building bird houses.  He’d clean things up as he liked to organize and put things in their place.  He enjoyed it when his sister and brother in laws would want to come and quad. He would take them up into the hills and tour the Greenstreet area, often ending the day with a fire, supper and drinks.

He would go out on his side by side and shoot gophers, check and count our cattle and tell us if the fence needed fixing.  When the grandkids were younger Katie recalls he would take them for quad rides and make up songs and sing about anything that came to mind along the way.  Not necessarily rhyming or making sense but it would get a laugh.

He loved playing cards.  As kids we would play cards often crazy eights, rummy or crib.  He would beat us time after time and when he could see us getting frustrated he let us win one maybe two games so we wouldn’t quit playing with him.  He did that with his grandkids too.  Even at our family gatherings he always stayed competitive in cards, whether it was pass the ace, 31, Kaiser or crib.   We didn’t care if we won the game as long as we beat dad and we would tease him about it.  I will tell you it didn’t happen very often he was a very smart card player.

Something you may not know about Dad is liked taking pictures.  Because he loved nature he would take a picture of beautiful scenery or field, animals or sunsets.  But he also liked taking pictures of himself.  He never mastered the selfie he preferred mom taking pictures and videos of him.  She recalled just recently having another photo shoot day.  She said we were inside, outside, had outfit changes, hat, no hat, holding different items.  Mom has endless nature photos and “selfies” of dad.  

During his retirement in Lloyd he went almost every day to the mall for coffee in the afternoons with his coffee friends. I am told he had a specific spot he liked to sit.   He would talk about his grandchildren and what they are doing and talk about Kent’s farming and his cattle.  He was very proud of you all.  He would often see people he hadn’t seen for years walking in the mall and they would stop and say hi or have a quick visit and he appreciated that.  He loved playing solitaire, a variety of card games and puzzles on his IPad and he was an Edmonton Oiler fan.

Dad was good with numbers.  If he was buying or selling equipment or anything for that matter he had is pencilled out to a tee and his salesman skills always came in handy.  Dad could fix anything, he was a jack of all trades.  He enjoyed fencing and loved his farm life.  He was fascinated with airplanes and he would have loved to have been a pilot. 

Dad was a thinker and a worrier.  He thought about the world and how things have changed and worried about what his kids and grandkids are going to see and go through in their lifetime.  He gave lots of advice whether you wanted it or not, he felt he had wisdom to share and he did.  He loved watching and feeding his birds in town and cussing the squirrels that would come and chase them away.  He was always remodelling his feeders to keep them out. 

He teased people and us a lot just like all the Leer’s do.  But that was his way of expressing he cared.  He wasn’t a man that told you he loved you very often.  But he showed his love for his family by his guidance, providing for us, helping us build things, running equipment at harvest and did whatever he could to help.  During his 6 days in the hospital when we would facetime and talk to him, each time we said goodbye he would say “I love you”. 

This is just a small write up about Dad, but know he had a great memory and could tell stories and remember people and their names when he talked about them.  Dad loved to have fun wherever he went.  People would always be around him laughing and enjoying the conversations.    

Each of us has many memories to reflect on.   Even though we can’t all be together to share them today, those memories are with us forever and can be shared anytime. 

Dad home was your favorite place to be.  You are home.  You will be missed but forever remembered.  Thank you.

We want to express our gratitude to our family and friends and community for all the phone calls, messages, food, flowers, prayers and kind words.  We feel the love you had for John and Jeanette and family.  It’s sincerely appreciated.