Dad - Part 8
But he was definitely mechanically inclined too.  He liked working with motors.  He would go to the Bizarre buy up small motors and rebuild/refurbish all sorts of wood working tools.  I think he gave Wade some, both Brian and Dustin a set.  I think even Kevin or Justin ended up with a few.
He could draw, we often received handmade holiday and birthday cards.  I kept a whole set he did for the boys when they were little.  He taught us all how to draw.  Jean got the artistic gene from him, who got if from Grandpa, dad’s dad.
He taught us sooo many things and the memories list is so long I couldn’t possibly cover it all.  But hopefully this pulled back a few memories or stories of what he was like for you to hang onto, and if not, I am sure there is some “stuff” in Jean’s garage that will remind you.
We’re gonna miss you dad.  Say hi to mom for us.

Dad - Part 7
Pretty much everyone knows how much salt dad liked. There was gigantic circumference of salt around his plate when he was done eating.  Everyone, I mean everyone, tried to get him off salt.  He knew if you switched out for the fake stuff.  We eventually gave up trying to get him to stop.  He had endurance on his side.  And, as crazy as this is, salt is now really good for you.  Probably one of the reasons why he lived so long.  I am just waiting for sugar and ice-cream to wrap back around. 
Once he told me that he had and entire set of roads and buildings painted onto the school’s blacktop playground for children to ride tricycles on.  They loved it so much they ended up duplicating it in other elementary schools.
He loved coming up with games for kids.  There is a mini pool table equipped with multiple games still in Jean’s garage that he refurbished.  I think it’s being used as a table now.  But it’s there!  Back when Brian and Dustin were little I volunteered in the PTA and had to come up with some games for kids to play at one of our fundraising events.  I was talking to Dad about it and then next thing I knew there was an entire set of outdoor games he made.  Bottles tied together with shower curtain rings to toss on top.  Different size buckets nailed to plywood and propped up to toss baseballs in.  Another was a big black tire on an easel type stand to throw foot balls through.  He even told me to go to the local police and have them hand out certificates with how fast kids could throw balls that were officially clocked with their radar.  The kids really loved that one until of course one of the kids actually threw a ball a little too far into the police car accidentally and broke the windshield. OOPS.

Dad - Part 6
.  I remember learning how to catch crabs with nets and then eating them.  So many cool trips.  You couldn’t wait to get home from school to go on a trip.  Dad built 4 cubbies under the kitchen table bunk for each of our set of clothes.  Remember that?  Of course, there was a scary end to that trailer when we took Jode to college, but we survived, had a massive experience and that didn’t take away from all the fun we had with it.
Do you remember Panther Lake?  He bought us a house that had been set on fire.  He taught us how to scrape down the char off of the 2 x 4’s, paint it to seal in any leftover smell, and then butt up the new wood to what was left of the old wood, nail it together and rebuild the room that way.  I thought that was the coolest thing.  At the time we didn’t like the mandatory 4 hours of work a day on the lake house before we could play and enjoy the lake, but boy does that come in handy now with my current lake home when my boys and their families are around.  We learned how to water ski and to do pyramids.  So many new experiences there.  I was just talking to Tammy and Greg recently.  This was actually before Tammy’s time but quite a few of us were there when we all had our first experience being in the middle of an actual aerial firework.  Remember?  Front lawn, relaxing in lawn chairs ready to watch fireworks.  This firework had a mind of its own, didn’t go up and pretty much landed on the ground and went off.  The spray of the firework was zooming past us as we all ran for cover. The dust settled; everyone must have been thinking it was clearly a dud.  So, in our infinite wisdom it was decided to do it again.  Surprise, surprise, the same thing happened again.  Dad shut us down!  Turned out the mortar was smaller than the pipe shoot size, and it spiraled up the shoot and went sideways instead of going straight up.  Now we all know, the pipe size has to be the same size as the mortar! Boys.

Dad - Part 5
next to it.  Not the little plastic ones you can buy today, it was like a 10 foot x 10 foot sandbox.  And he added a swing set.  We had hours and hours of play out there, except of course when the whistle blew.  And that was just early childhood building, he continued to build the rest of our lives.  He built book/toy shelves for my boys in one of my houses, he helped Andy put in our cement front stoop when it had to be redone. Although he didn’t remember that and I had to prove it with a picture.  He built numerous shelves and work benches for his garage in NJ and then did it again in his lake house garage.  And in Jean’s house, although then it was, ya need um over here, ya need um over there.
I remember he didn’t want to mow the lawn anymore so he taught all of us how to mow the lawn, weed the gardens, move dirt from the neighbor’s yard to make a patio for mom.  He installed a pool and the deck to go around it.  He taught us to paint too, we painted everything, rooms, furniture, hell we had to scrape and paint the outside of the house every so many years.  I hated it then but am so thankful he taught us all that he did.  
Remember the Layton trailer?  We used to do sleep overs in our own yard with it, sneak out and eventually got caught, and yes Dad shut us down. I wasn’t allowed to do sleep overs in it after that.  He would take us all camping.  I remember Dad teaching Wade and I how to fly a kite.  And then of course the kite went so high it flew away.  The rope end wasn’t tied to the holder.  I was unhappily dubbed “Mary Poppins” by dad after that. I see the humor in it now but I didn’t think it was funny back then.   I think that might have even been the same trip that Wade and I took a wrong trail to go back to camp and ended up on a 3-mile hike and dad ended up having to come look for us.  We learned miniature golf on camping trips.  And we went to so many places, Shinkateek and Asateed (SP?) islands.

Dad - Part 4
memories.  They want maybe not quite as much, but they do want some of it.  And all of dad’s children, grandchildren and great grandchildren will have plenty of memories to hold onto.
I remember he could make anything.  There is one distinct memory about what he could do and mom’s knowledge of it that became very valuable to me with my own husband.  Mom wanted him to build the built-in cabinets to store the dining room China.  I remember them going back and forth on how they were going to look and I remember he kept trying to do the entire project the simplest way.  He tried to rationalize that it was less expensive to do it the easier way.  Mom wasn’t having it and persisted that he wasn’t going to take the lazy way out.  In the end he did them the way she wanted and they were awesome.  Another time she wanted him to move a hanging wire from a wall hung lamp inside the wall and he would persist that it couldn’t be done.  She knew better and he would eventually do it.  And the list, is long, of the stuff he built… He moved the stairs in our house, he built a bar under the stairs with a hidden compartment for guns, he finished the attic to make a room us three girls and attached a playroom equipped with built in toy shelving and fold down play tables, he built a Make-up table with mirror and chair for mom in her closet, he built a long cabinet in the bathroom that made life a thousand times easier and prettier for mom.  He built a big long desk with shelving in Wade’s room. Many a bed time story he read from that desk with us standing around the chair looking over him.  And if all those projects weren’t enough, he built and entire apartment for my grandmother over the garage.  The man could make stuff!  You remember the play house in the back of our yard.  That was originally in mom and dad’s first house.  He took the play house apart piece by piece and reassembled it in the NJ back yard.  And he felt that wasn’t good enough so he built a huge sandbox

Dad - Part 3
DAD are home!  I am sooo screwed.  I threw a pillow and blanket on the floor and told my boyfriend to get on the floor and then up the stairs came dad.  He looks at me asks if he was on the floor all night, pretending to wake up I said, “yeah”, then up the stairs came mom.  Dad immediately turned around and basically pushed mom back down the stairs.  Phew.  Coolest thing my Dad ever did!  Basically, the boyfriends were then told to go sleep on the downstairs couches.  Of course they didn’t, after dad left, one of the boyfriends said, “hate to eat and run” then jumped in their cars and left.
Remember being grounded?  Who would you go to get out of it?  Yup, Dad.  Every time!
I remember dad teaching us how to ride a bike, and then how to wash it and shine with wax and basically take pride in ownership in it.  It’s that example he gave to me that stuck.  You know take care of your stuff, no matter what it is.  It matters.  He would, like many people in that generation reuse stuff. Repurpose.  You didn’t throw anything out.  You remember his NJ garage, well and every garage since?  The little glass baby food jars and peanut butter jars.  There is still stuff to this day in the garage he shared with Jean that was his father’s stuff.  We’re talking generational “Stuff”.  And let us not forget collections: trains, music boxes, stamps, and coins.  He loved those trains; we even had a train xmas tree all with the train ornaments that we gifted to him over the years.  I remember him holding each one up and talking about them. Jode made him wood plaque that was a train painted and wood burned.  He taught us all how to wood burn, let’s face it, that was really a lesson in how not to burn yourself.  A lesson that I generationally passed on to my kids, whom I pretty sure burned themselves!  Today, everyone thinks that the younger generations don’t really care about that stuff.  That isn’t what I am finding.  People tend to care about the “stuff” that triggers

Dad - Part 2
In terms of Dad not blowing his top, one example that came to mind was when Wade and Dwyane tried to siphon gas from the car for the lawn mower.  They were maybe 13 years old or so.  Mom and Dad weren’t home.  So of course, while siphoning the gas they were screwing around with making a fire on the stones in the driveway.  Somehow the fire managed to catch onto the siphon tube and when they pulled it out really quick some gas splattered on the side of the car and lit up.  Meanwhile, mom and dad were driving home and pulled over to let the fire truck pass them only to find out a little while later that the fire truck had gone to their house.  Dad didn’t blow his top.  He wasn’t happy but from what I understand he took the whole situation in stride.  I firmly believe it’s because Jode and Jean broke him in by then.
Another time I was really thankful for dad’s composure was well another time that mom and dad left me and Wade home alone.  Ya think they would have learned!  Jean and Jode were at college and Mom and Dad went to Panther Lake.  So, when your 16/17 years oldish what do you do?  Of course, you party.  First you need beer, so I drove the station wagon with Wade and some friends up to the local liquor store where we could get beer.  On the way back the car stalled so Wade jumped out to push it down the hill so we could either jump start it or at least get it closer to home, you know less distance to walk.  Well, when he went to jump back in he slipped and the car ran over his foot.  Long story short we took him to the hospital, called to let mom and dad know and set him up in mom and dad’s bedroom to recover.  WE, meaning me, my boyfriend at the time, best friend and her boyfriend went upstairs to drink more and go to bed.  I woke up 3:00 ish to the sound of a car coming in the driving. That can’t be car, I thought.  Looked out the window and started counting cars.  My car, boyfriend car, grandma’s car, other boyfriends’ car and UT O! MOM and DAD

Dad - Part 1.
Thank you all for coming.  Having family and friends here who I basically consider family anyway means the world to me.  All of you loved dad.  But before I begin talking about Dad, I want to thank Jean, Jessica, and Cassie for the wonderful care they gave to dad.  And, also Wade and Stephanie for when Dad was living with you guys while Jean was under construction. You all are living angels and there just aren’t words that can cover how much we appreciate what you have done for him.
I sat down thinking about what I wanted to say about Dad.  How I wanted to give you all insight into the kind of man he was, the dad we loved.  When I did, I thought, I want to share something impactful, something you would all remember and carry with you with a smile whenever you thought about him.  That made me think about MOM.  Her funeral had something that Pastor Charles did that has remained with me since.  He literally blew a whistle; he repeated the numbered blows that represented each child she was calling.  Jode was 1 blow, Jean was 2, I was 3 and Wade was 4.  At the time of the funeral, it made me cry, but now it makes me smile.  It has since occurred to me she didn’t have a number of blows on the whistle for dad.  I am not sure how he escaped the whistle calls.  I mean they were meant to call us from the back of the yard because she wanted us to do something.  Maybe a chore we didn’t do.  Sometimes it was good like sending out a snack to all of us, but mostly not so much.  The fact that dad somehow escaped the “come here right now” call makes me laugh.  Who knows, maybe she tried and it didn’t work.  But that thought, that impactful whistle blow that Charles shared with everyone is what I want to do for dad.  But dad didn’t blow a whistle, hell he didn’t even blow his top, except maybe for once every 10 years or so. So instead, I will share some of my fond memories of him and while recalling them maybe we’ll hear a whistle.

I was a foster kid who was found by one of his daughters and being the stray kid was always invited to dinners, holiday events, he was always really nice to me. he taught me how to sail, he let me stay at their house by the lake. and treated me always as a person, regardless of my background. He showed me what a good father could be like, by his example with his children.

Wishing you peace and comfort as you celebrate your father’s life. Keeping you all in our thoughts and prayers.

                  Love,
                  Bonnie, Gordon, Anna and Gordon

Such loving memories of the man who taught me to swim at Lake Hopatcong, was there to support me when there was no father in sight, and along with my cousin Ellie would take me in for Easter vacations and during the summer. I will miss you, Bub. ❤️🙏
Sincere love and sympathy to your fabulous kids and grandkids. 
       Linda, Al & Michael ❤️❤️❤️

I’m gonna miss watching the news with you every morning with the volume turned up to  FULL BLAST,  our deep talks in the car and listening to your stories of when you grew in in the 1930’s . Thanks for loving me and my Lucy so much! I miss you already! Thanks for always being so good to me!!

OBITUARY

Adolph Knehr

December 13, 1930 – August 22, 2025

Mullins & Thompson Funeral Service

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