LAKEWOOD - A lot of people are shedding a lot of tears for a guy who made them laugh.

Harley Kiser did things in a big way. He was a regular patron of the National Western Stock Show. One year, he took 130 guests, paying for their admission and seats at the rodeo.

It was a 30-plus-year tradition for Harley, who liked to take his longtime friends with him after first treating them to breakfast.

"He'd always go on Martin Luther King Day," said his granddaughter, Deborah Schulte, of Lakewood. "That's when the kids were out of school. He'd always hire Buffalo Bill and Annie Oakley look-alikes to entertain the kids."

He had a lot of longtime friends. But he had the sort of personality that if you knew him for five minutes, you were a longtime friend. "He's everybody's best friend," said his daughter Linda Phillipi, of Lake Arrowhead, Calif.

Harley died Aug. 18 from complications of lung cancer. He was 93.

He was born May 8, 1914, in Stanberry, Mo., to Orville and Christina Juhl Kiser.

He grew up on a farm in Clyde, Mo. He graduated from Conception Junction High School.

During the Great Depression, an older brother invited him to come to Colorado to work for Great Western Railroad as a gandy dancer, repairing tracks.

He said he compiled a list of 21 jobs that he wouldn't recommend for anyone.

The first was felon.

"He was a 5-year-old felon," Schulte said. "He and a cousin went up into the hayloft of a barn to smoke a cigarette."

They ended up burning the barn to the ground. Harley went unpunished, but was always embarrassed by that.

When he was older, he was a salesman, ditch cleaner, potato sorter and sharecropper. "He didn't turn down jobs," friend Marcia Sautter, of Evergreen, said in this column in 2005.

During World War II, he joined the Navy and ended up maintaining radio towers in the South Pacific.

When he came back to Denver, he used the G.I. Bill to get a degree in sales and marketing from the University of Denver.

He often told his relatives that "education is the most important thing you can ever get in this life," Schulte said.

He also told his family he wanted to help people who didn't have it as lucky as he did.

In the late '50s, he was hired by Marathon Oil Co. as a janitor and retired as director of maintenance.

He also invested wisely and luckily in real estate.

"I've gone from being so darn poor that if it cost a nickel to get out of town, I couldn't even say goodbye," he said.

In 1963, he married Mary McGraw, a longtime friend. She died in 2001.

Friend Jackie Joros, of Parshall, said Harley loved to tell tall tales.

"He just loved to suck you in, telling a story," she said. "That was the biggest thing - he made a lot of people smile and laugh."

He gave most people nicknames. Joros, who likes a beer once in a while, was Brewski. And Schulte was Noodles because she made him homemade chicken-noodle soup that he said tasted just like his mother's.

Friend Mike Taylor, of Lakewood, said Harley's big laugh was a trademark.

"When we'd talk about Harley, we'd say, 'How's Ha-Ha-Ha-Harley doing?' " Taylor said.

Survivors include three daughters, Jean Seeley, of Aurora, Joan Kiser Schulte, of Denver, and Linda Phillipi, of Lake Arrowhead, Calif.; two grandchildren, two great-grandchildren and four great-great-grandchildren.

Services are 10 a.m. today at Olinger-Crown Hill Cemetery.

Massarog@RockyMountainNews.com or 303-954-5271

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