I was born to Alfred Harker and Mary Edna Osguthorpe Harker on October 26, 1917. The sixth of seven children. My youngest brother was born on my birthday in 1919 but died the following spring so I do not remember him. My parents had built a new home on their farm which was three miles east of Shelley, Idaho, in a community called Jamestown. This was also the name of our L.D.S. ward. Our home was a two story home with five bedrooms, a living room, dining room, large kitchen, a pantry, and bathroom. As we did not have a well, there was no plumbing in the house. We used water from Sand Creek which we carried in buckets. The creek separated the house, garden and orchard from the rest of the farm. We had a foot bridge across the creek to get to the barnyard. 

My memories of growing up were very pleasant. We lived one half mile from any neighbors but we used to trade work with our neighbors so we did get to play and in the summer we would go swimming in the creek very often. There was a lot of work to do, but when we would be cultivating the potatoes, we would take a quick dip in the creek or ditches we used to irrigate the crops. As nobody was close, we would skinny dip-no clothes. We only used a swimsuit when girls were present. 

Our grade school was a mile and a quarter from our house and we walked to school. In the winter when the work on the farm wasn’t so great, my father would take us to school in the bobsleigh on stormy days. In the second grade, one snowy morning, my father took us to school in the sleigh and when we were about a mile from school we could see the schoolhouse had burned to the ground. The vacation was short as they fastened boards to the backs of the benches at the church and we went to school at the church for the rest of the year. A new school was ready by fall. When I was in about the fourth grade, one day my older brother, Wayne, took us to school in the car. I got out, went around the back of the car just as my brother put the car into reverse and ran over me. It was a lightweight car and didn’t hurt me so I got up and went to school. It was a Star car.  

I remember most of my teachers. My second grade teacher was Miss Merchant. She later married Ken Thomas, and became Aunt Frances. Another teacher I had in the fifth grade was Miss Heath. I remember her because she would have parties for our class at her home. My eighth grade teacher was William Brighton. His ancestors founded Brighton resort up our canyons here in SLC.  I enjoyed school and we had spelling bees, math bees, etc. At the end of the year, the State Department of Education would send out tests that we would take, to see if we would pass to the next grade. 

High School was a little different. I had to walk a quarter of a mile to catch a school bus to Shelley High School. It was a three mile ride to school. As soon as winter came, the roads would get snowed in and we would walk or ride in a sleigh with a cover over it like a covered wagon. It was cold but we would bundle up with quilts and sometimes in the coldest weather, the driver would have a coal stove in the sleigh. Once in a while, the sleigh would tip over on its side as we went over the snow drifts. We would all jump out, tip it back up and be on our way. I do recall sometimes the boys would slip out the back and as we went over the drifts we would help the sleigh tip over and of course the girls would scream and scream. Never did anyone get hurt. I was active in plays, dances, etc. but didn’t do much in athletics. To take football or basketball, I had to walk home. My father thought the chores of milking, feeding the livestock, etc. were more important than sports. I enjoyed high school. 

While all this school was going on, we had church duties too. My father was in the bishopric for about eighteen years so I went to church regularly. We had some good Primary teachers too. Primary was held after school at the schoolhouse. Our Primary teachers had a lot of patience to put up with our pranks. M.I.A., as Mutual was called, was held on Tuesday evenings and there we had Scouts. Our Scout meetings were mostly play. I do not recall any Eagles. I recall being President of both the Deacons and Teachers quorums. We only used three to pass the Sacrament so we usually had enough boys for the job. 

In our Ward, we had a young lady who organized us into a young people’s choir. She taught us how to sing and also how to lead the music. During my teen years, I sang a lot of solos and we had a mixed quartet and did a lot of singing. Our teacher was Marie Anderson. 

I was secretary of the YMMIA at fifteen and went on to be Stake M-Men president and the Stake M-Men advisor. We used to have Stake dances every Friday night in the Shelley Stake tabernacle. They were fun times. Our M-Men and Gleaners also had dances and we joined with Idaho Falls and Rigby Stakes to have tri-Stake events. We held tri-Stake youth conferences and the Church leaders from Salt Lake came up to see how we did and these were the first such conferences for youth held in the Church. At this time the Church came out with the Master M-Men and Golden Gleaner program. I had already met all the requirements for Master M-Men so I became one of the first Master M-Men in the Church. President Heber J. Grant presented me with my pin at our Stake Conference in 1938. 

An interesting thing about my Primary days was as a trail builder. Our teachers took us to Shelley and taught us how to dance. We learned how to waltz, fox trot, etc. Because of this, my older sisters were always taking me to the dances with them and their friends. It was a fun time. 

It was at the Stake dances that I met my sweetheart, Adele. She came to Shelley to go her senior year to high school. She lived with her older brother Ken and his wife Frances, and helped take care of Gary and Patsy. We started to date and I would go to take her to a show or dance but oftimes she would have to tend the children so we would stay home. Adele was busy in high school activities so I had to compete with those too. She was a beautiful girl and I was very proud to go with her. We went together that winter and the next summer. I didn’t get to see her much as Malad was a long drive then from Shelley. We did write and the next winter of 1938, I came to Salt Lake to go to LDS Business College, and Adele came and worked for a family here in Salt Lake. We were engaged at Christmas and were married in the Salt Lake Temple April 12, 1939. Work was hard to find so I farmed with my father and brother, Wayne, that summer. That didn’t work out too well so the next summer I worked for Rod Millar on a farm south of Shelley. We had a home on one of Rod’s farms with a garden, a cow, some chickens, but no car. We were about five miles from town so Adele had to get by on what we raised. It was a happy time for us and we decided we would go to school in the fall and become teachers. 

In preparation for college, we raised a big garden and Adele canned vegetables galore. One day she decided to can string beans, so she picked the beans. Now with vegetables, you must eat them as soon as possible after they are picked. She had to use the hot water kettle method and she canned beans all night long. She canned corn, spinach, red beets, meat and some of this saw us through our two years at college. She was a super cook. Along with this she tied fishing flies for Ken, her brother, to earn a little extra money. Ken sold these flies to the sporting goods stores.  

That fall we went to Albion State Normal School. This was a teacher training school and after an associate degree, we got a teaching certificate. Adele got her certificate in primary grades and I got mine in junior high. We rented a two room apartment and started school. We didn’t have much but we got student jobs at school to help us through. Our landlord ran a movie theater in town and we would go and take tickets just to see the show. We were busy at school. Adele’s brother, Russell, went to school at the same time so we got to visit with him and his friends as well as our many friends too. One fall, Russ asked Adele to cook a pheasant dinner for him and his friends and their girlfriends. She agreed, so Russ and the boys brought back 24 pheasants all cleaned and said they would be back with the girls around 4 o’clock. I can still see those birds. She cooked them to a beautiful turn, she had dinner ready and we waited and waited. But the boys got busy and never did come to dinner. In those days we didn’t have a fridge, so we had to throw them away. 

We were the only married couple at the College so we were a bit unique. The school was small so everyone knew everyone else. We were busy with student activities. I was in the Cardinal Glee Club as well as in drama, etc. Adele kept busy with clubs for her division so we had a happy time there. We were busy in the church there too. It was a small Ward with a fellow who came up from Burley to act as our Bishop. Lots of women came to church but only a few, like two or three young men who were Priests came, and I would be the only Melchizedek member so I would have to take charge as our Bishop would call and say he couldn’t be there and would I do the job. 

Our last year at Albion, I was Senior Class President so at Commencement time I had Apostle Harold B. Lee come and give our Baccalaureate address. He was the first LDS speaker that had been to Albion for many years. The school was astonished that he would take no pay nor gasoline stamps to come. The ministers who came up from Burley and Twin Falls all had to be paid and had to have the stamps as this was war time and gasoline was critical. 

After graduation from Albion State Normal school, we taught our first two years at Samaria, Idaho, Adele’s hometown. It was a three room school. I was principal and Adele taught first and second grades. We had many friends that have lasted our lifetime. The war was still on and people gave us all kinds of rationed food stamps as well as shoe and gasoline stamps. We taught for two years there and it was a good time. 

We then went to Shelley and ran my father’s farm and I taught in Shelley High School. My father and mother had gone on a mission to Louisiana for two years. It was here that our son Max Elliott was born. At this time I was called on a Stake Mission and ordained a Seventy. After the return of my parents, I accepted a position in the Pocatello Schools as principal of Bonneville School. One of my teachers was the wife of the owner of Bistline’s Lumber. After the second year, I went to work at the lumber yard as manager of the lumber department. This was a good job as I made much more than teaching. I readily learned how to read blueprints, figure lumber, etc. and we furnished lumber for about 150 houses a year. At this time we built a home on 15th Street in Pocatello. It was here that I was asked to be in the Bishopric of the 14th Ward. These were good times for us. I applied for a job with Simpson Timber and got the job. We moved to Salt Lake and I traveled to Utah, Idaho, part of Idaho including Boise and northern Nevada. 

After three years in Salt Lake on Claybourne St., we moved with Simpson to San Leandro, California. I traveled East Bay and the valley from Modesto to the Oregon border. Here we met a lot of dear friends. We lived across the street from the school and Farley pool. Max Elliott became an excellent swimmer. For a while he was on the swim team, the San Leandro Beavers and went to some swim meets. The Simpson people were always trying to get me to move but I told them I would move but I preferred to move back to S.L.C. After many years I moved to Hawaii after the division I had worked in was closed and I was to be terminated. After two months of terminal leave, the company called and asked if I would go to Hawaii for four years. I accepted and Adele and I moved to Honolulu, Hawaii. 

Moving to Hawaii was different, as the people I called on were all Japanese, Chinese, or a mixture. They were very gracious and went overboard to make us welcome and feel at home. The company agreed to send Adele home at least once a year so it wasn’t too bad as we look back. Being LDS was a determining factor in my going there. Gil Oswald, the president of Simpson, said Max Harper should go to Hawaii as there were a lot of LDS in Hawaii and that I would stay and do a good job there. I did. About two months after we got there, Mrs. Chong, owner of City Mill Lumber, the oldest and largest lumber company in Hawaii, had a dinner for us and especially for Adele as she thought Adele would be homesick and needed a friendly welcome. It was a real Chinese dinner at a cafe downtown Honolulu which took two days to prepare some of the dishes. It was delicious. The people of the company presidency and their wives were there. It was a 15 course dinner and took about two hours to serve it. We were well received by all the people. This same company, City Mill, had another dinner a while later for us too. When China was opened to tourists, Mr. and Mrs. Chong were in the first group from Hawaii to go to China. Shortly after they came back, Mrs. Chong died from cancer. She was a very nice person to have known.  

Being LDS, we had a ready made family in the Islands. We lived in Tropic Gardens, just across the street from Kahala Ward. We went to church and got acquainted with a lot of LDS people. Our ward was about half caucasian and the rest a mixture. I was asked to be High Priest group leader after about two months. I didn’t know the brethren because they all looked pretty much alike and I couldn’t pronounce their names. Eventually I found they were all different and names soon came to me. Adele soon went to work, as a sales person that she knew from her job at Auerbachs had sent word to Liberty House about her coming. Liberty House called her and offered her work. We met many dear friends there. After the Temple was rededicated, I was called to be a sealer in the Temple and will always be thankful for that calling. 

In my work, I had customers on all the Islands and I traveled to all the Islands at least every other month. Many times I would arrange to go on Adele’s day off and we would go together and see the sights. If she had two days off we would spend a night or two on the outer Islands. Air flights were many each day so you could go about any time you wanted. The longest flight was only 40 minutes so it was easy to travel around. Interestingly, I often talked to people who had lived all their lives and had never been off the island they lived on. By the same token, we had friends who would fly to Los Angeles or San Francisco just to have dinner, stay overnight and fly back. We saw about all of the sights on the island and had the pleasure of having many friends come while we were there. Many of our family came and we took them to the outer islands and of course a must was the Polynesian Cultural Center owned by the Church up by the Temple at Laie. Max and Pat, Mike and Missy came over for a vacation and we did have fun with them. Oft times I would take friends to the airport to leave and would wait to pick up others coming in. Everyone was welcome and made our stay much more enjoyable. I must mention the missionaries who lived five doors away from our apartment. We had the boys come most every day or evening to stop by and have a bite to eat and tell us of their successes. They were all good boys and were like family. I bought tools so they could fix their bikes, then we would take them up the hill, the hale koa, so they could tract back down the hill. We always kept food in the fridge so they could go into the kitchen and fix a meal for themselves. We loved them. 

After four years in the islands, I was transferred back to the mainland to work in the plywood and door division for Simpson. I was to cover Salt Lake, Denver, and New Mexico. Most of our business was in Denver and my immediate boss thought I should live in Denver. But after some persuasion by others, I moved to our home in Salt Lake. This new move required that I spend every week in Denver. Because I would fly, it was good work and I had very good distributors and business prospered. After three years, the company decided everyone 57 years and older would retire so I retired. I would have preferred to stay the next year as I would have been 65 years old but these big companies do as they please and I went along with them. They did give Adele and me a trip back to Hawaii for 18 days with all the expenses paid which we did enjoy and got to see all our friends again. 

The joy of my life has been Adele, our son, and our grandchildren. What a joy it is to see them grow up and also have them come and stay with us. As they get older, they do not come as often but their time is taken up with more important things such as friends, work and so on. As other events occur, I will add to this. In 1988, I will be 71 years old. I can say I have had excellent health and I hope it will continue.