Obituary of Gerhard Peter Huefner

Gerhard Peter Huefner, born March 8,1943 in Wiesbaden, Germany.  He was called home to the Heavenly Gardens on Saturday, August 31, 2024, after a long illness of Multiple Myeloma.  Gerhard was predeceased by his parents, Ludwig and Erna (Schneider) Huefner and a sister, Ermgard Hayes.  He is survived by his wife, Becky and his son, Erik, and his wife Dana and their daughter, Olivia.  He is also survived by his stepdaughter, Kelly Cohrac and her husband, John and step-grandchildren, Matthew and Lauren and a niece and nephew, Heidi and Peter Huntington.            
He was born in Germany during a World War II Air Raid.  His father was an Accountant, and his mother was a seamstress. His older sister married a US Air Force soldier and moved to the US and the family joined her a few years later to visit her and stayed until Gerhard graduated High School.  Gerhard was 11 years old when he entered American schools and was fluent in English in 6 weeks and went on to be an extremely gifted student.

Gerhard enlisted in the US Navy with plans to enter the OCS Program, but he came down with an acute case of Tonsillitis.  He recovered but missed the opportunity for OCS so he boarded a destroyer {USS Warrington(DD-843)} and left for Viet Nam.  After 2 years of service and sailing around the world he left the Navy for college.  While on the ship he was the editor and reporter for the ship newspaper which he loved as he had the run of the ship and access to the Captains Deck.

He graduated from the University of Eastern Tennessee in 1965 with a degree in Psychology. From there he went on to work with troubled children.  He had many interests, and he followed his heart from one profession to another: cooking in a restaurant, working in a Gym, selling diet food and diet courses and selling and teaching Real Estate.  He taught German as a substitute instructor to a group of High School kids, which was an awakening experience. He also taught courses in Master Gardening at Germanna Community College.

Gerhard had many hobbies but the ones that captured his heart was cooking and gardening.  He selected cooking shows on TV over any other program and has a cookbook library as good and plentiful as a bookstore.  Gerhard started his gardening in our front yard in Fredericksburg, VA where there was sun all day long, so he planted asparagus which was his first and only failure.  From that point on he planted and succeeded in growing whatever he could get his hand on.  He built a greenhouse in Virginia and once he moved to Maine, he built a hoop house mainly for his cherry tomatoes and hot peppers which he would eat every morning as he sat in the hoop house with his coffee.  His last planting endeavor was a few months ago when he could hardly walk, and he got his walker out to the deck and planted a sprig of a Fig tree that he had ordered months ago and finally came and he was determined to plant, and it grew beautifully.  I'd take pictures of it from time to time so he could enjoy the growth.

He was also a self-made cook /chef and could produce a meal fit for a king.  Supper was always an experiment with very exotic ingredients and almost always was a delicious surprise.  He had many specialties and always inquired about what we wanted for supper.  The only downside to his fantastic dishes was the work area that looked like a tornado just passed through.  It was worth every bite of food.

Gerhard fell in love with Maine as it reminded him so much of Germany.  The neighbors and friends he met were always so welcoming and friendly.  Once he settled here in Maine, in our “little house in the woods”, there was no talking him into moving south closer to our children; not even when the snow was 2 feet deep!

His family loved him and all his idiosyncrasies and had many fun times with him.  He was a faithful husband and loved his family.  Hopefully he's watching over us all from his garden in the sky.