When it got here time to plan the funeral for Harold “Red” Leonard, his sons knew there was just one place to carry his Irish wake: the Fury Motors automobile dealership in South St. Paul that he founded in 1963.

Leonard’s casket can be on display Wednesday on the dealership on Concord Street flanked by two of his favorite cars: a salmon-colored 1959 Plymouth Fury with swivel front seats and a pair of,600 miles and a white 1963 Plymouth Sport Fury 361 Commando V8 with push-button drive. The wake, which runs from 4 to eight p.m., will feature storytelling, food and music.

“To his last day, he loved cars,” said Tom Leonard, his oldest son. “When a automobile drove by, he could inform you whether it was a ’53 or a ’54 based on a taillight change or a headlight change, whether it was a Ford or an Oldsmobile. He collected cars and had one from every decade, starting with a 1914 Dodge 4D touring automobile.”

Leonard, 95, died Thursday of natural causes at his home in South St. Paul, just a number of weeks after making his last visit to the dealership, where he still had an office.

“Once we built the brand new constructing in 1999, he had transitioned out of the business, and he said, ‘I don’t need an office at the brand new dealership; you guys are doing great. I’ll come visit occasionally,’” said Jim Leonard, his youngest son. “We said, ‘Well, the best way we designed the show floor, we’ve this extra office. It’s the one which overlooks the cashier’s room and the show floor.’’’ He said, ‘Well, I can try this.’”

Red Leonard opened mail, went to the bank and visited with customers and employees, Jim Leonard said. “He began coming in far more once we opened the brand new constructing. He was just so happy with what it had grown to, and he desired to be involved.”

For Red Leonard, “work was never work,” Jim Leonard said. “It was all the time his hobby, his passion. I don’t think he ever checked out it as a job. He loved the people and the purchasers as much as he loved the workers. He would never put himself first; the purchasers and employees were all the time first.”

Red Leonard grew up in South St. Paul. His father, Thomas Howard Leonard, worked because the sales manager at Danielson Ford in South St. Paul, and his son went to work on the dealership at a young age.

“He was a runner. He emptied the rubbish, he washed cars, he picked up parts,” Jim Leonard said. “He began driving when was 12. My grandfather would go buy cars out of the paper on the weekend, and he would bring my dad with, and my dad would drive them home.”

Thomas Howard Leonard died of a heart attack when Red Leonard was 17; his mother, Barbara, died of complications related to cancer 4 years later.

Leonard and his two older sisters went to work and raised their younger brother and a younger sister, Tom Leonard said. “Everyone stuck together,” he said. “There was no doubt about that.”

Red Leonard graduated from South St. Paul High School in 1946 and got a job within the accounting department at 3M Co. He was later drafted and spent two years serving in Korea.

During an outing to Kaposia Park in South St. Paul in 1945, Red Leonard, then 17, met Jeri Lee, then 16 and a student at Washington High School.

“She was sunbathing with girlfriends, and he or she asked my dad to place sunscreen on her,” Tom Leonard said. “That was it. He thought she was the prettiest girl he had ever seen. Certainly one of my mom’s friends knew my dad’s family, and he or she said, ‘Oh, Jeri. That’s family. He can be a handsome, handsome man sooner or later.’” The couple married in June 1954 and had two sons; she died in 2012.

After his discharge, Red sought a sales position at 3M, but was told to stick with accounting. Undeterred, he went to work as a representative for the DeSoto division of Chrysler Corp., calling on all their dealers across the Midwest.

In 1961, he took a job running Adamson Motors in Rochester, and he and Jeri bought a house in Oronoco, Minn.

But Leonard all the time planned on owning his own dealership sooner or later. He told his superiors that if a dealership ever became available in South St. Paul or Sioux Falls, S.D., he’d be fascinated by purchasing it, Tom Leonard said.

In 1963, the Leonards purchased the Chrysler-Plymouth dealership in South St. Paul; Red Leonard was 34.

“He had $5,000 in his pocket, one automobile on the lot and 4 spark plugs,” Tom Leonard said. “Word on the road was he wouldn’t make it six months.”

Nevertheless it turned out people liked buying cars from Red Leonard. He was “real, easygoing and honest,” Tom Leonard said. “He was such a low-key guy, filled with integrity. His word was his bond. He all the time believed that if you happen to handle the client in service, they’ll come back to you for sales.”

It was Jeri Leonard who suggested that the dealership be named Fury Motors after a preferred Western TV series starring a stallion named Fury. “Fury was like Lassie,” he said. “He was strong, and he was there to avoid wasting the day.”

Red Leonard said the name ticked all of the boxes: “It was short, it was easy to recollect, and it began with an ‘F,’ so it could be towards the front within the Yellow Pages,” Tom Leonard said. “It’s no different from today with a Google search. You wish to be at the highest of the house page.”

But when Red Leonard told Jeri that he was going with Fury Motors, it seems she had modified her mind. “She said, ‘I don’t prefer it,’” Tom Leonard said. “He said, ‘It’s too late. It’s already done.’ Chrysler had a automobile called the Plymouth Fury on the time, so Dad said it was a simple decision for him.”

Tom and Jim Leonard joined the dealership in 1988 and 1991, respectively, and in 1999, Fury Motors moved to its current location on the intersection of Interstate 494 and Concord Street in South St. Paul. Fury also has locations in Oak Park Heights and Waconia.

Red Leonard made the transition in ownership easy, Tom Leonard said.

“That’s the toughest thing with family businesses, How do you transition?” he said. “But he made us feel very much it was our job to make those decisions. He would say, ‘If something goes a little bit awry, we’ll correct it.’ You’ve got to fall all the way down to learn, and he allowed us to do this.”

In 1991, Red and Jeri Leonard left the business of their sons’ hands for a month to go on a Chrysler-sponsored trip to Europe. Tom Leonard was 25; Jim Leonard was 23.

“He said, ‘You understand, if you happen to guys have month, perhaps we’ll stay for an additional two weeks,’” Jim Leonard said. “After all that drove Tom and I to do every thing we could to have the most effective month we could possibly have, so he stayed away, after which he began going to the cabin on Balsam Lake (Wis.) increasingly. He held the reins, but he really allow us to run the business.”

Tom and Jim Leonard said there was never any query about following of their father’s footsteps.

“You grow up within the family business, and it’s a part of your blood,” Jim Leonard said. “He never asked us or pushed us to get into the business. He supported us and wanted us to follow our dreams. That is what we desired to do.”

Jim Leonard said his father is the one person he knows who lived his entire life without regrets.

“He married who he felt was probably the most beautiful woman he had ever met in his life — inside and outside,” he said. “He began a business that he dreamed of starting. He passed it on to his boys, and I believe he took more joy in watching us take over and run the business than he actually took out of it himself.”

On the night before he died, Red Leonard had two pieces of coconut-cream pie and a glass of milk for dinner.

“He was a quite simple man on the surface, but he was strong-willed, determined and disciplined,” Tom Leonard said. “For those who get to exit in your terms, exactly as the way you set out, in a grateful, joyous and thankful way on the road you created, within the lanes you stayed in your whole life, you win. I believe he won at life.”

A Mass of Christian burial can be held at 10 a.m. Thursday at Church of the Assumption in St. Paul, with visitation an hour before the funeral. His Irish wake can be held from 4 to eight p.m. Wednesday at Fury Motors.

Bradshaw Funeral House is handling arrangements.