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player ready...Harvey Fehrenkamp has been a dancer as far back as he can remember. When he was a little boy, his father used to give him 50 cents just to watch him cut the rug.
Years later in Schulenburg, Texas, he was a much in-demand partner at the two local dance clubs.
So it was a real shock to learn last winter that he would have to lose not just one, but both legs, partly as a result of frostbite he contracted decades earlier trudging through the ice and snow in France during World War II.
But if you think losing his limbs got Fehrenkamp down, you don’t know Harvey.
At the ripe old age of 92, he not only learned to walk on two prosthetic legs but learned to do it in five weeks — three months ahead of schedule, says his therapist.
He has vowed to dance again, and soon.
“My dad’s a wild man,” says daughter Nancy May, 53, a bank vice president.
To demonstrate his prowess on a recent afternoon, Fehrenkamp hoists himself up from his wheelchair and, using a walker, strides across the carpet inside the apartment Nancy built for him behind her house. At one point he lets go of the walker: Look, Ma, no hands. And these are just his temporary legs. The fancy prosthetics come this month.
The story of Harvey Fehrenkamp gives testimony to what a strong spirit and positive attitude can accomplish in life, not just on the mountaintops but in the depths of despair. Melissa May, 25, calls her grandfather a hero.
“He never complains,” she says.
Fehrenkamp was born in 1915 in Moulton, Texas, a small, rural community on the coastal plains west of Houston. There were no paved roads in the town and when it rained, Fehrenkamp had to walk to school in the mud.
His grandfather owned a lumber company, and in 9th grade, Fehrenkamp was forced to drop out of school and work there to help his family.
The Depression had the country in its grip and folks in small rural towns felt it keenly.
He worked in the lumber yard for years. Finally, when he was 26 and tired of the backbreaking work, he drove to San Antonio and got a plumbing job, making $53 a month. He left behind his sweetheart, Anne Neugebauer, a school teacher in Moulton.
He and Anne got married in 1941, just before the United States entered World War II. Fehrenkamp was drafted in 1942 when he was 28 and served in the military police before he was shipped overseas.
“France is where my feet were frozen,” recalls Fehrenkamp.
Fehrenkamp, who would spend six months in the war theater, went on to earn two battle stars for combat action.
Once home, he thrived in the role of father and husband.
While he has always been an active man, his wife Anne didn’t dance, and so Fehrenkamp’s dancing shoes remained idle during their vibrant, 45-year marriage. Then, in 1986, Anne, a longtime school teacher, passed away.
Fehrencamp didn’t like living alone, says his daughter Nancy, so she built the cozy apartment for him behind her home.
Six months after Anne died, Nancy and her father attended a family reunion in Schulenburg, and Fehrenkamp discovered a whole new community of friends in the small town. He started visiting on weekends, and in 2004, moved into the Regency Villa, a retirement community.
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That’s where he met his present girlfriend Jeanette Hollub, a spry 78. They live in different apartments 20 feet apart and have been inseparable ever since.
They danced and danced, going to dinner parties at the Knights of Columbus hall with 400 people. With energy stores of a much younger man, Fehrenkamp lived the good life.
Then last winter, Fehrenkamp developed sores and gangrene on one leg. Dr. Daniel Tamez, a vascular surgeon, did what he could to save the leg but the circulation was too far gone.
“My grandfather jokes that an alligator bit off his second leg and a shark bit off the first,” says granddaughter Melissa May, 25.