Anton Harry Harwig

Tony was a renaissance man. If something needed fixing, he fixed it. If he wanted something built, he built it. When most people speak of building a house, they are thinking of hiring an architect, carpenters, plumbers, and electricians. Tony was the carpenter, the architect, the plumber, and the electrician.

Born in 1926, it was not an easy time to be a boy, let alone the son of a ne’er-do-well German immigrant who would frequently left him had his four sisters to sleep on cold, unheated floors. Some of Tony’s earliest memories were of walking along the railroad track after the coal trains passed looking for the odd pieces of coal, hoping to catch some moments of heat during long winter nights.

These memories gave him a lifelong fortitude and an unwillingness to spend even a dime on creature comforts. It also gave him a burning desire to get away -- at the age of 17 he enlisted in the Navy and was promptly shipped to the Pacific Theater where he served in Admiral Halsey’s fleet abord the aircraft carrier Boston. His mechanical aptitude was quickly apparent. Tony trained and graduated as one of the very first people to work on the aircraft hydraulic brake systems and cable shock absorbers designed for fighter planes later in WW2. He was invested in seeing that his work was perfect because when he wasn’t working on the planes he flew in them, sitting backward behind the pilot operating a tail gun.

As the war wound down, Tony was among the first waves of soldiers to enter Japan after the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Like many of his generation, he seldom spoke of his experiences in the war, so we know little of this period. We do know that he wanted to be and officer and was accepted into office candidate training only to be rejected later when it was discovered he lacked a high school diploma. He bitterly recalled waiting weeks to be mustered out of the service, being forced with fellow servicemen to stand guard for weeks on end over rows of trash cans, each soldier assigned his own can.

After leaving the Navy, Tony went to Chicago where he lived on Cicero Ave. On a warm summer afternoon, he wandered down the road to Laslow’s, a local ice cream joint for his favorite indulgence. He was served his cone by a striking redhead, Marie Aabey. Dad liked Marie and he liked ice cream so he kept coming back to Laslow’s throughout the summer. Lacking an excuse to see Marie as the fall and winter wore on, he took an alternate path and the following February they were married.

Marie’s dad, Arne, was a proud steelworker and brought Tony into the union where they worked high steel in the Chicago Loop. In 1957 Arne died in a fall. Tony stayed in the union for a few more years but in the early 60’s fibbed his way into a job as the wastewater treatment plant director in Elmhurst, IL. where he had moved his young family. He began night school at Illinois Institute of Technology and earned his degree in civil engineering 5 years later, going on to graduate school where he earned his master’s degree in public administration. During this time, he worked his way to Assistant to the City Manager. With no further room for advancement in Elmhurst, he took the position of City Manager in Gulfport Florida.

Tony’s career took him from Gulfport to City Manager in Palatine, IL, then on to St. Joseph MO, finally winding up in Flagler Beach, FL. where his career as a city manager ended and he finally built his first house.

Building houses was always in his blood. Early in their marriage he and Marie bought an old barn and worked to tear it down and recycle the lumber toward the building of a house. Lack of money and time left that project unfinished, but the dream remained and was resurrected years later in the coastal swamps of Florida. There, while working full time as a city manager, he bought a parcel of overgrown land and began clearing and building in the sweaty Florida sun with mom and his two teenage sons Rob and Zack. After two years of work he moved into a sprawling 3-bedroom home that had his and the family’s fingerprints on every board, nail, wire, and pipe in the place.

But dad never really wanted to live in the swamp or the heat. Circumstance had put him there. And when circumstance led him out, he moved west to the fresh air of the Colorado Rockies. The Mountains. The place he’d dreamed of. There, in his sixties and unemployed for one of the first times in his life, he began scouting for land. After months of searching, he landed on acreage bordering Pike National Forest; with Marie at his side began building his second house. Together through the fall and winter they worked through digging the foundation and laying the block and subfloor. In early summer, reinforcements arrived in the persons of his older sons Dan and Tim. Together with Marie, they framed a second home. A home they loved and determined to live out their lives in.

Tony’s drive to build and fix never stopped. He and Marie would spend months every year traveling from one relative’s home to another’s offering their skills (as love) to them. When Tim bought an old garage to house his frame shop in Minneapolis, they came out and helped to change the garage doors into windows and build out the shop. When Tim decided to turn part of the building to a gallery several years later Tony and Marie came back to tear out the walls they’d built and put up new ones. And Tim wasn’t his only project. Tony worked on Marie’s cousin Rodney’s home in Evansville each time they visited; they worked

on Marie’s brother Jerry’s home in Ill. At nearly 80 years old, they came to put a roof on their daughter Kathy’s home in Michigan.

At the age of 95, Tony had a heart attack. Living in the middle of nowhere they refused to “call the meat wagon”. Rather, they hopped in the car with Marie ready to drive. When they hit the door opener…nothing. Tony, in the middle of his heart attack, got out of the car, hopped on a ladder, fixed the door, and off they went to the hospital.

After the incident, Tony lived five more years. With only half a functioning heart he continued working around the house doing odd jobs, installing a dishwasher and garbage disposal. You get the picture. But both he and Marie were declining. In 2023 Their daughter, Kathy came out to help care for them. Tony still never stopped; his mind was sharp but his body was failing. Earlier this year, on their 75th anniversary in February, Marie died. Tony never recovered and on June 9th he died of a broken heart. He’ll be laid to rest next to Marie on the 26th. He is missed, but his handiwork remains.