A friendship that spanned the generations

It was a friendship that reached across generations and was sparked by a chance encounter.

Three years ago, the Rev. Herbert Adrian Cies, then 94, met Cassoday Harder and Hannah Rhoades – both 20-somethings – in a Newton thrift store.

The three became fast friends – adopted family, even – sharing holidays and special events with each other.

And when the Rev. Cies died late Friday, Harder and Rhoades were at his bedside, ensuring the retired Methodist minister and World War II veteran would not die alone.

The Rev. Cies was 97.

Funeral services will be at 2 p.m. Tuesday at the Chapel of Asbury Park in Newton.

The Rev. Cies was born on Feb. 23, 1919, in Wichita. He grew up a block east of what is now I-135 in Wichita and graduated from Wichita East High School in 1938.

He attended William Jewell College, then transferred to Denver University and was there for a few years before being drafted in World War II. He served five years overseas in the Sixth Armored Division Army Tank Corps, Combat Command as captain in communications in France, Germany and Luxembourg.

After the war, the Rev. Cies earned his bachelor’s degree from the University of Kansas. It was there he met Eva Lucile Hower Tanner, a widow with four children. The couple married, and he graduated from Iliff School of Theology in Denver, afterward becoming a United Methodist minister.

The friendship the Rev. Cies developed in late 2013 with Harder and Rhodes came just a few months after his youngest son died and a year after his wife of 63 years had died.

More than seven decades separated the Rev. Cies and the two women.

He was sweet, Harder said.

“It was an unexpected friendship,” she said. “I never expected to meet someone that much older that you could connect with. He taught me a lot about loving people and just being kind.”

After the thrift shop encounter, the three met again later at a Chinese restaurant he would eat at once a week.

The two millennials invited the Rev. Cies to join them at their table. He accepted.

After that, the three friends would get together often – and both the Rhoades and Harder families invited him to join them on the holidays.

His own children and grandchild live across the nation.

It was such an unusual friendship that in February 2015, The Wichita Eagle featured an article on the three friends. At the time, the women described him as a grandfather figure. But Rhoades in the article said it was more than that.

She leaned on a verse from the Bible to explain: “We love because he first loved us.”

On Friday, when news came that his health was failing, the Rhoades and Harder families came together one last time for their friend. They surrounded him at his bedside.

“For me, I feel it was a once-in-a-lifetime experience,” said Cassoday Harder’s mother, Cristy. “I feel there are not a lot of people who get to experience a friendship like that. And to see my daughter and Hannah experience that, it was priceless to me.”

On her Facebook page, Cristy Harder wrote: “This morning, I asked him what his one piece of life advice would be for me. He thought for a really long time. So long, in fact, that I thought maybe he had forgotten the question. … Then he said, ‘I would have to say it would be what your daughter, Cassoday, and Hannah taught ME. Love one another.’ ”

The Rev. Cies is survived by his stepchildren James Tanner of Hemet, Calif., and Donna Mourey and family of Newton; his grandson, A.J. Cies; stepgrandchildren; and nieces and nephews.

A memorial has been established with the Asbury Park Good Samaritan Fund. Contributions may be sent to Broadway Colonial Funeral Home in Newton.

This story was originally published November 20, 2016 at 6:32 PM with the headline "A friendship that spanned the generations."