Wif Leiker plays a tune in this May 19 photo on a hammered dulcimer he made in his garage workshop at his home in Hays. He started building his first hammered dulcimer 50 years ago and is building his seventh one.

Hays ? Earlier this spring, Wilfred “Wif” Leiker met a longtime goal of placing a fitting memorial marker at his younger sister’s grave.

That done, the Hays man now can concentrate on completing the construction of another hammered dulcimer, hoping to give one to each of his three daughters someday.

Crafting handmade items with love, for those he loves, is something Leiker has been doing all his life. He started building his first hammered dulcimer 50 years ago and is in the process of building his seventh one.

Among other ventures while raising his family along with his wife, Eileen, Leiker has raised honey bees and pigeons and greyhounds and even coached a couple of Golden Glove boxers who went on to win Kansas-Nebraska championships.

“I’ve always liked doing things no one else wants to do,” he said.

That’s why Leiker decided one day to build a dulcimer — despite no formal training in woodworking or music.

He bought a frame from a Hays man in 1960 and finished the dulcimer, then built one of his own from scratch a couple of years later.

From choosing the different woods of the dulcimer to tapping in the tuning pins so they don’t split the wood to twisting his own string, Leiker puts a lot of thought and effort into each and every step. He even makes the wooden hammers to match each dulcimer.

The same resolve went into another project Leiker completed this spring.

One of his younger sisters, Patricia, had died of whooping cough at 3 months old in 1937, when Leiker — the second oldest of six children — was 8. The cement marker at her grave in St. Joseph Cemetery in Hays lost its identification card long ago.

So for a few weeks this winter, Leiker switched to iron works.

He visited the Munjor cemetery and found a cross “from the old days” from which he fashioned his own.

He cut rings for the iron cross from pipe and used two other pipes around which to form a decorative design at the bottom of the cross from some scrap iron. He had the pieces welded together and painted, then added a gold engraved plate with his sister’s name, dates of her birth and death and the inscription “Our Little Angel.”

“We called her that because when Mom was putting away her things after she died, she told us (Patricia) was our little angel,” Leiker explained. “I’ve remembered that, thought it would be nice to be on there.”