Harry W. Gobler
1938-2020
Harry and Laurie
The beginning ...
Harry and I met when I took a job at an engineering company in San Francisco as his boss’ secretary. Harry was the consummate nice guy – kind and polite to everyone, thoughtful to a fault. At the time at which we met (January 1980), there were flower stalls on many corners throughout San Francisco's Financial District where we worked. Once a week, he stopped by and picked up a dozen roses. He would then pass them out to all of the secretaries – one for each of them, six for me. One day, someone asked whether he was sweet on me. I said no, he just gets them for all of the gals and gives me whatever’s left because I’m the boss’ secretary. (Harry often observed that I was seldom accused of being "the sharpest tool in the shed ...!")
In this job as in every job I have ever held, I worked like a maniac. If someone assigned work to me, no matter how impossible the timeline seemed, I would work long hours to make it possible. Engineering companies typically have a lot of ebbs and flows – lots of deadlines: some client work, some business development. I was always willing to stay late to get work done. It did strike me as odd that no matter what time I left the office, whether at 5pm or at 8pm or any time in-between, Harry seemed always to be on the same schedule. We'd meet at the elevator on our way out and hop a bus to the train station. We then rode the southbound train together until he got off at his stop and I continued further south. It took some time before I realized that he listened for me every evening (I have never been accused of being graceful or stealthy).
Once I realized that he really was sweet on me, I decided that I needed to help find him a nice girl. I was a product of 40s movies – the ones in which guys were tough, macho, and “bad” but had a soft inner core – that’s what I thought all men were supposed to be. Someone as sweet, considerate, and kind as Harry on both the outside and the inside could not possibly be right for me. So I fixed him up with one of my friends. After they had gone out a couple of times, he asked me to not do that any more.
It was then that he invited me to a baseball tournament in Lake Tahoe. In typical Harry style, he didn't ask me on a date - he issued a certificate.
It was a fun weekend in Tahoe but consistent with my inability to recognize something good, I pondered about how to let him know that we needed to be "just friends." During the tournament, I sat next to one of Harry's very good friends from Sonoma. Roberta's husband was the pitcher. Bill tended to get a bit emotional now and then. Harry would walk up to the mound and speak with him quietly. That somehow calmed Bill down and he pitched better. Roberta remarked to me "There's only one real man out there."
It was then that I started to see Harry in a different light - that there could in fact be someone that was kind and gentle, and still be a "real man." Why shouldn't I have a guy that really cared for me and was incredibly kind and considerate -?
The Engagement
From that point on, Harry and I were a couple; no more trying to fix him up with others - he was henceforth mine.
He proposed to me during a bus trip to Lake Tahoe with some of my friends. He didn't actually ask me - he gave me a memo.
I said yes.
The Wedding
We were married in Hawaii. The wedding was planned by my mother and was filled with her friends from the Hawaiian Telephone Company so other than our parents, relatives, and a few friends, we didn't know very many of the people there. But my mother was happy.
I was late to the wedding. I remember it as 20 minutes but Harry swore it was 45 minutes. My mother had started to panic and he said the judge was preparing to give him "the talk": "These things sometimes happen ..."
It was just me, as usual, losing track of time. And then, although I hadn't lived in Hawaii for quite a few years, I confidently got into the rental car and drove to the location without looking it up on the map. That's probably what accounted for the additional 25 minutes.
In any event, once I got there, the wedding proceeded and fun was had by all.
Harry-Laurie Wedding 1981
I was thrilled to be able to rescue the ceremony portion of our wedding video. This was in the very early days of home video - it was filmed in Sony Betamax on a brand new camera with some learning curve by my cousin, Wayne - and it did not survive the conversion from Beta to VHS to digital well.
You will notice the Judge, Harry, and I looking down several times during the ceremony. That's because our flower/ring-girl, Carolyn, very intent on performing her role, kept pulling on our dresses, shouting: "Mommy, where's the wedding??" Carolyn plus a LOT of birds in the background made it difficult to get good sound quality but it made my heart sing to be able to hear Harry saying his vows to me, all over again.
After the Wedding ...
We were exhausted so after going to my parents' house to open gifts and have dinner with both of our families, we went back to the hotel and crashed. Friend Chrissie left her daughter, Carolyn (our flower girl/ring bearer) with us for the evening while she went out to visit some nightclubs. We were apparently not awake when she returned that night so Carolyn spent the night in bed with Harry and I, smack-dab in the middle.
In the morning, Harry bragged: "What a man am I! Who else could have given you a 3 year old child after just one night??"
Harry supported me on all my crazy schemes
While establishing his own consulting engineering practice ...
Harry also served as Treasurer and Primary Donor for one of my nonprofits, PSP. He later became a part-time employee of Water Energy Innovations, providing engineering support and QA/QC over all of WEI's technical work.
I recently came across some workpapers that Harry prepared for one of WEI's projects that estimated the costs for different types of water system leak repairs. I was tickled to see that he applied the same disciplined analytical approach and thoroughness to his cost estimates for these very small projects that he did for railroads, bridges, wind tunnels, and other complex structures.
When I started Water Energy Innovations in 2012, Harry said he wanted to help me earn my very first dollar so he presented me with this:
I have this memory of Harry coming into the Navigant office and you running down the hall to smother him with a hug.
Chelsea H.
Harry was one in a million. His kind will never be repeated, and his loss is felt by all of us.
Mark M.
I am so sorry to hear about Harry; I was very fond of him.
Ed T.
He was such a sweet man! His face and smile were so angelic - he looked like an angel.
Sonya D.
We will miss his smiling face, walking in our door with our annual box of chocolates. He always seemed so happy to be able to give these to us.
Hector & Charlotte F.
Harry often characterized himself as an introvert. Yet everywhere we went, he quickly found common ground with people he was meeting for the first time and struck up interesting conversations.
When I first met Harry, I noticed that he knew the names of all of the building maintenance and security staff and they knew his; they greeted each other like old friends and chatted before he left the building every evening.
Early in our relationship, he accompanied me to an international transportation event where he met someone from the Port of Seattle. Harry told me that he said to himself, "I've been to Seattle and know something about the Port!" So he struck up a conversation with this person, only to learn that the Port of Seattle representative had never actually been there - he represented the Port remotely from California.
At SCE's 2019 Water Conference in Tulare, he staffed our exhibitor's desk while I attended presentations. By the time I came out to check up on him during the morning break, he had introduced himself to the other exhibitors, knew them by name, advised me about common points of interest with WEI, and introduced me to each one with suggestions as to things we might consider pursuing jointly in the future.
Harry-isms ...
A promise made ...
is a debt unpaid.
I know we need to get rid of some things ...
but why are they always MY things?
Ken is the only person I know ...
who can drive faster backward than I can drive forward!
Okay, what did you do with it?
... the money your mom gave you for singing lessons??
Since I met Laurie ...
we became the family that prays AFTER dinner!
Boundless creativity and a vast imagination
In at least one of his prior lives, Harry must have been a movie mogul. Whenever we watched a movie, he would say: "That scene would have been much better if they had instead done 'this'." His critiques ran from script edits to character development, and to cutting, editing, and reordering scenes. In virtually all cases, I agreed with Harry that his version would have been way better.
Since we didn't have children (at least, not of the human kind), our household was comprised of an extraordinarily diverse group of imaginary friends and family, most of which were of species unknown. He named each one and gave them distinct personalities and voices. Without Harry, our home has become far too quiet; I will need to find a way to hear his and their voices again.
Our most recent collaboration
... was our kitchen remodel.
As with all things on which we needed to collaborate, we spent a lot of time researching and negotiating. Once we agreed on everything, we purchased the appliances and engaged the contractor. Demolition started on March 16th, 3 days before the COVID-19 shutdown in California. Fortunately, our contractor was deemed "essential" and continued to work. The seller of our kitchen appliances, however, didn't believe they met the criteria for "essential". Harry persuaded them to deliver the appliances to our garage just before they shut down. Installation of the appliances was completed through the kindness of our kitchen contractor and our plumber, who carried everything in from the garage and did the installations. Our new kitchen became operational on April 2nd.
Since restaurants were closed due to the pandemic, we made very good use of the new kitchen. Harry loved to cook, and he loved to bake with me. While we did not get the 1-2 years working together in our kitchen that I had hoped for, I have vivid and fond memories of Harry helping me make pineapple upside down cake, chocolate pudding, shortbread cookies, blueberry muffins, cranberry-orange madeleines, and the occasional prime rib roast. I can still see him meticulously placing maraschino cherries in the center of the pineapples, greasing the muffin tins and carefully filling them with the right amount of batter, and scooping out cookie dough and filling them with jam.
I also see him every time I look at the appliances and the cabinets. He selected the cabinets and the hardware, and we jointly selected the appliances and the countertop. I see him everywhere that I look and recall how much we enjoyed designing and working in this kitchen together. He was particularly proud of the pull-out crescent shelves he chose to maximize storage in those pesky corners.
Cookie Monster continued to preside throughout.