Each of us has our own memories and stories of Dad. My intent during the next few minutes is to share some of the stories that Dad shared with us and some of the ones that you may not have hear before.
Dad was five or six before his family moved to Regina and during that time, he has fond memories of country life and Gertie the dog-yes, my grandfather named the dog after his wife. Dad talks about riding his pet pig around the farmyard, and about Lady the horse.
He and his older brother were the only ones who could ride Lady. As Dad approached Lady, she would lower her head, let Dad climb on and then slowly raise her head, roll him onto her back and saunter back to the barn, but when Uncle Fred got on the horse, it would take off in a cloud of dust. At least that was Dad's version of the story.
Dad also recalled a story where he fell asleep in the field. All the adults became very worried about him, wondering if he fell down the cistern and drowned. Then they noticed the horses were standing in a circle. There in the middle of the circle, was Dad asleep with the horses swishing the flies off of him.
Dad also talked fondly about Sundays in the country. After church, four neighbour families would take turns hosting a Sunday afternoon. The adults would eat and drink homebrew and the 35 or so children would play in the yard.
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| Peter (in front) with his brother Fred and cousin Kay Sogz, 1932 |
City life must have been very different for Dad. He talked about Grandma buying her chickens fresh from a neighbour, then taking them home, putting them under the porch, and butchering them just before they were going to be eaten.
There was someone with a milk cow on every block. Dad was fascinated by the daily trek of cows coming up 11th Avenue after being pastured out of town for the day. He was amazed that every cow knew which home it belonged to and as the procession made its way up the street, each cow would peel off from the herd, go down the back lane and into the barn of its owner.
Spending money was hard to come by in those days and Dad would make his by collecting bottles and scouring the nuisance grounds for useful throwaways. On one of these trips, Dad, a friend, and two other smaller boys found a shipment of rotten eggs. Always knowing how to seize the moment, a rotten egg fight quickly ensued. Dad and his friend got the upper hand until two other boys happened along and sided with the underdogs. I would have liked to see Grandma and Grandpa's faces when he got home that night.
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| Peter (back row, right hand side) among the other staff of the tailor shop |
Dad learned to swim in Wascana Lake; he played outdoor hockey and he made the Regina Red Sox-a team in the top tier baseball league in Saskatchewan. Unfortunately, his work schedule in helping to support his family prevented him from ever playing for the Red Sox.
Going to Europe in 1943, he was transferred to infantry and was attached to Army Headquarters. He was in Ghent, Belgium and Nijmegen, Netherlands but the war ended before he saw conflict.
In November 1945, he went to New York to study at the American Gentleman Cutting and Designing School under a Veteran Affairs retraining program.
In one story, he and a friend were hitchhiking across BC where they rented a motorboat on the Okanagan. The boat was hard to start so Dad and his friend decided they would take turns driving the boat while the other had a swim in the middle of the lake. Dad jumped in first and a few minutes later, there was his friend beside him. "What did you do with the boat?" Dad asked. His friend replied that he turned the throttle down and turned the steering wheel so that it would go in a slow circle. When they were done swimming, they could just catch up with it. Two hours later and nearly exhausted, they finally did.
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| Photo taken by a street photographer in Calgary in 1945. The woman is just a bystander looking at Dad. |
In the years since, Dad has worked in almost all areas of the garment industry. He had a custom tailor shop on Scarth Street for a number of years before moving downstairs and selling for Mac & Mac Menswear. He started a clothing company, L & P Sportswear, with a factory in Regina making nylon and leather team jackets. Some of those jackets are still in use.
For the past 20 some years, he returned to tailoring. You had a hard time telling the difference between Dad's work and his recreation. He enjoyed meeting many of the influential businessmen, politicians and dignitaries who came to him for their clothing and alterations. It seemed that work and socializing were one and the same to Dad. He loved making clothes not just for paying customers but his own family. I remember a time when every year we had matching Father-Son suits for Christmas. Through high school, I was the recipient of Peter Niedermayer designer blue jeans-a trend that not all of my classmates saw fit to admire. Once retired, every few months saw a new outfit for his grandchildren.
In his later years, he was a tailor for Grothe-Barber Menswear Ltd. on 11th Ave. From there he went into semi-retirement and began taking more time off. Even after Wayne Barber moved to Hamilton St. and opened F.W. Barber and Sons, Dad continued to make visits to the store a regular part of his routine.
Dad very much enjoyed his friendship with Wayne Barber. Wayne was Dad's boss, as well as his friend, golfing partner and confidant. A trip to the city wasn't really complete without a visit with Wayne.
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| Mom & Dad's Wedding Day, June 21, 1958. Mom's parents, Jake and Rose Krausher, and Dad's parents, Gertrude and Matthias Niedermayer are at their sides. |
In 1970, they built and moved into a new house in Lumsden. My kids howl at the story of visiting the house under construction and Mom slipping and sliding headlong through the mud while trying to walk back to the car. After driving back to Regina sitting on her clean side so that she didn't get the car seats dirty, Dad quickly phoned all the neighbours to come over for coffee just to see her.
Dad was a dutiful husband who worked hard for his family. Although money was tight in the early years, they did enjoy many trips over their 42 years together. From their honeymoon in Niagara Falls, their travels included trips to see family and friends in Winnipeg, Edmonton, BC, Grande Prairie and Thunder Bay as well as holidays to Quebec and the Maritimes, Yellowstone National Park in Wyoming and South Dakota.
I think a highlight for Dad was a trip to Europe with Mom, Dianne and myself in 1986. Having last been in Europe just after the war, Dad was particularly impressed with the restoration of the Köln Cathedral, but he enjoyed revisiting other places he saw after the war as well as places he had never been before.
Their house in Lumsden has turned into their retirement home. Over the years, Dad has enjoyed gardening, and taking care of the yard. A couple of years ago, he sold his snow blower, preferring to use the traditional methods of shoveling for snow removal.
Just this past summer he bought a new chain saw and began to denude the yard of 30-year-old elm and maple trees, much to the fear and worry of his family and friends.
Dad often got ideas and then acted decisively on them. He didn't necessarily research his ideas to see how others have solved the same problems. From mixing concrete, to building garage roof trusses, from building basement showers to cutting down trees, Dad was a free spirit when it came to ambition with often interesting results. Dad's garage roof had more waves in it than a small lake because he insisted on fashioning his own roof trusses rather than buying pre-built ones. A couple of summers ago, he gave himself a concussion while cutting down a tree and this past summer he left a tree teetering ready to fall in any direction after he cut into it from all sides at once.
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| Family portrait, 1988. Back (l-r): daughter-in-law Colette, son Daryle, and daughter Dianne. Front: Dad and Mom |
Coming home from school for lunch, she probably was the only kid to ever be served a smoked oyster sandwich. For myself, I think Dad was always disappointed with me as an athlete. I never learned to skate well; I was a poor swimmer and a lousy baseball player. I think he wondered what part of me had his genes. But he tried hard to encourage me and he always let me be myself without guilt or embarrassment.
I only ever remember getting a spanking from Dad once and I don't remember what it was for, but I remember deserving it. Most of the time, his style of discipline was talking.
Dad often told the story of when I was 7 or 8; I was outside cussing up a storm about something. Dad came along and heard me, then calmly told me that if I couldn't find more appropriate words than that to express what I felt, he felt sorry for me. I don't remember that particular story, but I have never had a problem with a foul mouth so I'm sure it must be true.
Family was very important to Dad. He loved his grandchildren. Visits with them were events to look forward to. He took an active interest in everything they did and said. Whenever any of us were out of town, he would always be phoning to see if we got home OK. He was very proud of his children and grandchildren. He always supported us in whatever we wanted to do or become.
As kids, we always knew we could count on Dad. It didn't matter whether we had to move home for a while to get our feet back underneath us, or phone Dad up at 2:00 am because we locked our keys in the car, whether we were moving across the country or we were short on cash, we knew that Dad would always do all he could to help us out, even if it meant a hardship for him.
Dad's sense of humour was every child's nightmare. When you told him, "I'm hungry." He would answer back by saying, "Hi, I'm Peter."
One of Dad's favourite lines was that he could understand any language except Greek. As a child, I would try to find newspaper or magazine articles or posters in other languages and ask him if he could read them. His answer was always the same, "It's Greek to me!"
A couple of years ago, Dad started getting into rose gardening. An avid Roughrider fan, Dad enjoyed watching sports on Television and the decision to get cable and TSN was a milestone for Dad. I don't think he even thought about retirement before that point.
He once told the story of Allen Blakeney walking into the store just prior to President Tito's funeral in Yugoslavia. Dad met him and pronounced, "Mr. Blakeney, for the Premier of our province, you look terrible!" and then proceeded to sell him a new suit.
I don't remember anyone every having a grudge against Dad, and for his part, he liked almost everybody. He wasn't a critical man and was accepting of pretty much everybody even if he didn't agree with their actions or views. He would tell you what he thought, but he never told you what to do.
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| Dad "jamming" on Kaitlyn's French Horn, September 2000 |
Dad's humour was pretty much based on puns, but every once in a while he really outdid himself. Once when he was at Mac & Mac, he took a stuffed mouse from the Christmas window display and dropped it into a customer's tobacco pouch while he was trying on some clothes in the fitting room. Later this customer met his wife at the Capitol theatre for an afternoon matinee. While in the theatre, the man wanted to light up his pipe. Feeling into his tobacco pouch, he panicked. Running out to the washroom, he dumped the contents of the pouch into the sink and seeing the taxidermied mouse with a red stickpin for a nose, he realized where it came from and burst out laughing.
In his own life, he would always be there to help out others. I remember one Christmas Eve night when the temperature was -40; there was a car on the side of Highway 11. Dad thought he saw a figure in the blackened windows as we passed by so he quickly pulled over and backed up. Inside was a family of six that had stalled out two hours before. Packing them into Dad's small commuter car, the eight of us turned around and headed back to Regina to get them warmth and help. Dad didn't just wait until people asked for help; his mindset was always on the lookout to help others. Hundreds of other cars must have passed by that night already, but he of all the people was the one to stop.
If he had something that you needed and he wasn't using, it was yours. If a friend needed help with a garage sale, he'd help out without expecting anything in return. You could borrow his tools, his rotor-tiller, his truck and his time-all without expectations or reciprocity.
He was a tailor of men, a devoted husband, father, grandfather and friend. His values have served him well in all his many fields of life and now that I am a father too, I find that they serve me equally well as I struggle with the challenges of raising my children and living out my calling in a complex world.
I know that my sister appreciated the complete honesty that she shared with Dad and the completely unconditional love and acceptance that she received back from him.
For our mother, she had a partner who was there to help and support her in the day-to-day tasks of raising a family and looking after a home. Their extended family and many wonderful friends have enriched their lives together and I know that those are relationships that Mom will continue to treasure.
God bless you Dad and God bless us all for knowing our Dad.