The below biography was extracted from Lest We Forget, a family history written in 1983 and 1984 by Lucille “Tippy” Rebecca Kyle Harr, and updated in 2010 by Debra Harr.

Hester Lucetta Harr was named for her two grandmothers, Hester A. Hanger born June 10, 1831, and Lucetta Roby Harr born 1839. Hester was born at Buena, January 10, 1906.

She is the third and last daughter of John Rufus and Delarie V. Hanger Harr, and without a doubt a pretty one. Her eyes are blue, her light brown hair was naturally curly, and she is statuesque. She walked with confidence and her voice low. In earlier years she was quick to laugh and her words were spicy. She has no handicaps and her mind was average. Her main idiosyncrasy is the inability to make a decision. Seldom is she forced into a situation which requires this, and if she is, her mind plays tricks and her decision is again in limbo. In later years it has proved a real handicap in handling business. She is suspicious and accusing of her brothers - and sister-in-law, and protective of her brothers and sisters.

She has always been generous in her giving, even to the point where it proved impractical. She loved pretty clothes, and wore them with pride. She was immaculate when it came to herself, her home, and belongings. This was a lesson she learned well at home and when she was at Hopemont, an institution for tuberculosis. Other illnesses include an appendix operation, cataracts, malignant tumors, and a mastectomy.

Hester graduated from Petersburg High School, class of 1925.

After high school she started to Shepherd College in the fall of 1925, and then went to West Virginia University, and it was at this time that she and Guy were diagnosed with having tuberculosis. Hester spent 9 years in this Hopemont institution, except for a few sojourns home, for a short period of time. She had excellent home support and was afforded a few of the luxuries that were hard to come by. She made friends with several of the residents and cherished their friendship after leaving the institution in 1936. Even the convalescent period proved stressful and inconvenient, but she obeyed rules well.

She returned home and with TLC from her sister Bessie, she made full recovery.

By this time she had met and was seeing Harold Yokum on a regular basis. Harold had been most attentive when she was at Hopemont. Weekly visits, flowers, candy, magazines, and other extras did the trick. They were married December 31, 1938, in Petersburg by Reverend Ida M. Judy, a long time friend of the family and a favorite of Harold’s. There was no honeymoon. By her own admission, she took Harold as a second choice. Her first choice was Arthur Beaumont, a Morgantown Glass Company businessman. Beaumont did visit her, but I [Tippy] don’t know his intentions. Personally, I am glad she married Harold and from hearsay he was a better choice. Miss Ida, as she was known, brought out her bear rug for the occasion. I don’t know the significance.

A short while after the wedding they moved to an apartment on Park Street, Cumberland, Maryland. Housekeeping was not much effort in the two rooms they occupied. In June, 1940, they built their first and only two bedroom home on the Frankfort Road, nine miles from Cumberland, on State Route 28. In 1950 they bought another lot adjoining the residence.

This home was a haven as a stop over for all the Harr’s in their comings and goings to the hospital, shopping and doctoring.

She had a cocker spaniel dog called Lady she loved, and she was a member of the Petersburg E.U.B. Church, and to which she tithed.

Hester continued to improve and afternoon siestas were no longer needed. She lived a normal and fruitful life and made a decision early not to have children, and at a recommendation of a doctor.

In 1961, after 22 years of marriage, Harold passed away. Hester remained on in the home. She learned to operate an automobile, and took her first and only job—that of selling Avon. She made lasting friends.

She was the one who harbored Bessie when she had her two bouts with depression. One in 1960-61 and again in 1975-76. Even tho the last one proved disastrous, Hester did what she thought best, and mourned for the things she couldn’t do.

Life went on. Then in July of 1982, after an illness and hospitalization at Sacred Heart Hospital she agreed to go into the Heartland Nursing Home at Keyser, West Virginia.

She has been a great supporter of her family, and Debs is the one she wanted to protect most. Perhaps because he is the baby. Much to Debs’ dislike, then he had to answer for my actions. Hester would have been the one who would think that I should have taken the temperature of her brother’s toast. I didn’t meet these qualifications.

Plagued by ‘institution fever’—9 years at Hopemont and now Heartland—she resented the whole mess, resented the diagnosis of osteoporosis and that she would not be any better, that her business was not in the best of order, in the fact that she still owned the homeplace willed to her by Bessie, the price of the rest home, the care she didn’t get, and the food didn’t make life easy. She took no part in activities and did not ‘cooperate’, she said.

Debs sold the homeplace for her, for instant money, to Keith Wolfe, in 1982.

Family was her middle name. She wanted them around, and expected them to be. Debs, Gene and Debra are her only relatives, now. (1984) Winton and I are the ‘outlaws’ by the best definition. (Winton has died since the above has been written.)

The months of February and March, 1984, almost proved fatal. She got the flu, bronchitis, pneumonia, and congestive heart failure. The Intensive Care Unit at Potomac Valley Hospital and Sacred Heart Hospital, Cumberland, Maryland proved extensive and expensive, but she did recover enough to be returned to Heartland and that is where she is now. (May 6, 1984)

It is now September and after hospitalization and later out-patient care, she is being treated for a stricture.