Willis Harder

Bernard Willis Harder was the first child of Bernard G. and Elise (Wiebe) Harder on February 27, 1930. Elna followed the next year and Don and Lois at the end of the decade. Willis grew up on the family farm in Butler County, near Brainerd. In addition to the hard farm work during the hot decade of the 1930s, the family actively participated at Emmaus Mennonite Church where his grandfather was in his fourth decade as a pastor. Willis’ mother had been a teacher and ensured he was fluent in both German (spoken at home and Church) and English (elsewhere) before he entered school in Brainerd. His class was all boys until the 8th Grade. He joked later in life how superior his education was to his wife’s because he attended a two-room school and she only a one-room! Willis attended a different school each year of high school for health reasons and to further his religious education. As a freshman, he developed encephalitis and then rheumatic fever, landing with most of his family in the hospital for many weeks in Wichita, including on VE day in May 1945. [These illnesses diminished his energy level for the next 20 years and his school location had to be adjusted, or attendance delayed several times.] He graduated from Berean Academy, Elbing, in 1948. After a year at home recuperating, he enjoyed two years at Westmont College in Santa Barbara, California, including singing in the choir and seeing California. He transferred to Bethel College in 1951 to get more practical training. Willis graduated from Bethel College in 1953 in education and industrial arts. He was a conscientious objector and completed his two years of alternative national service (1W) as an orderly at the Menninger Psychiatric Clinic in Topeka in 1955, learning much more about people. Willis met Dorothy Regier at Bethel College, while both were working the breakfast shift in the cafeteria. They married in 1954 upon her graduation from Bethel. After both taught school for a year in Lincolnville, Kansas, they moved in 1956 to Dorothy’s parents’ farm in western Harvey County where they resided for the next 40 years. They had three children: Kurt in 1958, David in 1960, and Lynn in 1965. Willis became an active member of Hoffnungsau Mennonite Church, Inman, teaching youth and adult educational classes continuously and serving periodically in various leadership roles until the mid-1990s. He also spent a couple years as a Scout leader to Kurt and David. Willis grew the farm over the first couple of decades. In the first decade, the farm did not provide full time work, so he had various winter jobs, including driving earth moving equipment to create soil conservation measures designed to improve eroded, hilly fields. He applied this knowledge with great zeal to land that he acquired in the next decade to improve its productivity and to take care of the earth. He was an avid reader of K-State publications and attender of day classes on agronomy, becoming an early adopter of newer tillage methods and crop varieties. In addition to farming, Willis was an active member of the community, serving in numerous leadership capacities: for Harvey County on the planning and zoning board and on the watershed council; on the Bethel College Board; on the Western District Board of the General Conference Mennonite Church; and on the Sunshine Meadows Community Retirement Board. He cared deeply for these institutions, but Dorothy eventually had to limit his meetings to 2-3 per week. Willis used his carpentry skills to build or remodel housing for those recently released from incarceration to have transitional housing. He made sure we saw a different part of a nearby city by delivering food and gifts many times on Christmas Eve to families in need. Willis was also interested in seeing the world outside of central Kansas. He arranged things on the farm for multi-week trips in the late summers from 1971-73 to see family, friends, and national parks from British Columbia to Washington, D.C. These trips exposed his family to new sights, sounds, and people. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, Kurt wanted to have a greater role in operating the farm. This allowed Willis’ focus to shift. Willis became President of the Schowalter Foundation in Newton in 1992, and he and Dorothy moved to North Newton in 1995. Willis greatly enjoyed his new role spending the mornings managing the Foundation’s farmland and recognizing grant recipients, with the afternoons working on his farm with his son and in time several of his grandchildren. Willis and Dorothy joined Bethel College Mennonite Church in 2000. In 2004, they celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary with a wonderful family reunion in Colorado. Willis retired in 2006 from the Schowalter Foundation and immensely enjoyed a family history trip in 2007 that stretched from Ukraine to Uzbekistan. Kurt’s cancer diagnosis and swift death in December 2007 dramatically changed his and Dorothy’s world. An engaging and talented son suddenly was gone. Willis came out of retirement, at 78, to farm one transitional year. They then sold off all the farm equipment in 2009 on a bittersweet day. Willis and Dorothy traveled in North America during his final retirement, seeing many parts of the United States, Canada and northern Mexico by bus. Willis spent more time with his nine grandchildren and their activities. In 2014, Willis and Dorothy celebrated their 60th wedding anniversary during a delightful family reunion in western Nebraska. He also turned to books to see the world and from 2011 to May 2023 recorded in a logbook the title and date he finished reading almost 850 books. At Bethel College Church, he helped lead a Sunday School class and was active on the library and finance committees. Willis, with his daughter Lynn, was an active caregiver to Dorothy as her health declined over the 2010s. Dorothy died November 4, 2020, forcing another major life adjustment. Willis loved his farm, and it was a fabulous development when his grandson Ryan Schmidt changed his career and became the farmer of Willis and Dorothy’s land. It was a real thrill for Willis, who started farming in the 1930s with horses pulling implements, to be able in the early 2020s to ride in the very latest large farm equipment for planting and harvesting. Another delight was to purchase and have restored a favorite vehicle, the distinctively painted 1971 Ford Ranchero, that he had owned for several decades. Willis had a stroke May 31, 2023. He received exceptional care from the Kidron Bethel Village staff while he was in rehabilitation and recovered significantly. Thereafter, he had loving and thoughtful interactions with residents and staff in Assisted Living and HealthCare. Willis died on January 16, 2025, after a short illness, just short of his 95th birthday. His Celebration of Life service is February 1, 2:30 p.m., at Kidron Bethel Village Chapel, North Newton. The service will be livestreamed at https://www.youtube.com/@KidronBethelVillage/streams. Memorial contributions may be made to the Kurt A. Harder Scholarship Fund at Bethel College. Willis is survived by his son David Harder (Michele Horn), daughter Lynn Schmidt (Steve), daughter-in-law Dorthy Janzen (Keith), sister Lois Nattier (Sidney), nine grandchildren and four great grandchildren. Willis’ wife, eldest son, parents, and two siblings, Elna Dick (Harold) and Don, predeceased him.

Willis Harder

February 27, 1930 - January 16, 2025