Eulogy for Paul Harris
1925-2018
Welcome to all of you. Thank you for joining us. This was not intended – but the invitation for this memorial celebration has Dad’s self-portrait sketch looking skeptically at the words “memorial celebration.” On more than one occasion he said he didn’t want a funeral and didn’t want a eulogy. Well, by your presence here in his studio it looks like Dad has been outvoted by his family and friends.
As most of you know, Dad’s mother died when he was five years old. That loss stayed with him for the rest of his life and profoundly affected his character. Over his long life, I think he unconsciously tried to heal that wound by immersing himself in artwork and embracing friendships. It is not surprising that in his senior year in high school, he was voted most popular boy – also best dancer. Those were the days of the foxtrot and the jitterbug. During the Depression he and his sister Shirley developed an intricate tap dance routine which they performed at Rotary and other clubs to make a few extra dollars to pay for the family’s groceries.
My mother was his best friend. Much of what Dad accomplished was the result of her skillful assistance. And if you were to hold a party for my parents’ closest and most intimate friends, you’d have to send out about 2400 invitations. As you well know, these were genuine friendships, continuously renewed by conversations and letters. And he grieved when any of his friends departed this earth -- friends such as Dick Diebenkorn, Phyllis Diebenkorn, Art Carpenter, George Hogle, Vilma Ebsen, Gerry German and Elaine DeKooning.
After graduating from high school in 1944, he enlisted in the Navy and was assigned to a destroyer, the USS Ault. On May 13, 1945, the Ault, stationed in the Pacific, was attacked by a kamikaze aircraft. The plane was gunned down – “splashed” in the jargon of the Navy -- by the gunner, named Johnnie -- and Dad who fed him the ammunition belts. Johnnie was from an Indian tribe in New Mexico and was another lifelong friend. Dad never boasted about this event. When he spoke about it, he only repeated his admiration for Johnnie who kept amazingly calm when death could have been only a few seconds away.
When life aboard ship was more tranquil, Dad made drawings of his fellow sailors. Bernhard Uhl published a book of those drawings last year and gathered Dad’s memories of his drawings. One of the drawings is of two sailors who appear to be sleeping in the same bunk. Dad was careful to point out that they were not sleeping together, it was just that paper was very difficult to get in the middle of the Pacific while a war was going on and he was just trying to save paper.
As an artist, Dad never gained the rock star fame of his close friend Dick Diebenkorn. If you google Paul Harris, artist, it’s very hard to find him. Fame came by his door but never knocked. I’ve come to realize that his lack of fame was actually a very good thing. He didn’t shun exhibitions of his work or the occasional interview. But he preferred to be right here in his studio, drawing or sculpting. Fame would have subtracted from the time devoted to his work. Dad needed time – because, although he was a modest man, he was also a perfectionist. As Rick and Emily know very well, every line of a drawing or the texture of a sculpture had to be just right. And he would relentlessly return to the piece until it met his exacting standards. Occasionally, a sculpture or drawing failed to meet the test and it would be destroyed.
A wonderful aspect of his personality was his sense of humor. He rarely made puns and never told standard jokes, but he had a very sharp and quick wit – even in his nineties. I wish I had recorded an example of his humor in conversation. However, I can think of two cartoons he drew many years ago and another one that he didn’t get around to drawing. When I was about 4 or 5, a plumber came to fix the sink in our bathroom. I was extremely interested in this project, especially all the tools in the plumber’s toolbox – pliers, wrenches, screwdrivers and so on. As I recall, the project took two days and after the first day Dad handed the plumber the cartoon which was a picture of me holding a wrench and the plumber telling Dad: “Mister, it’s five dollars extra per hour if this kid helps me.”
The second cartoon was done in 1965 and was published in the Pacific Sun newspaper. It followed a controversy about whether the County Board of Supervisors should hire a lifeguard at Stinson Beach for the months of November through February. The Board decided against hiring a lifeguard. The cartoon was a sign on a buoy that read: “No Drowning During Winter Months.” The third cartoon was envisioned just as the internet was getting started. He described the cartoon to me; it was a spider talking to a fly that was about to get ensnared. The caption: “Welcome to my website.” My daughter Macquarie has drawn her grandfather’s cartoon.
Dad’s sense of humor also crept into a few of his sculptures. One of his sculptures (in what I call the upholstered women series) is called “The Visitor.” It is an upholstered chair with a woman’s two hands folded together in the middle of the seat. The hands express the Visitor’s expectation of prompt service and utmost respect. The other amusing sculpture is Mary Jane as I Knew Her. It is mounted on a ceiling and consists of the lower half of Mary Jane’s properly dressed body, complete with high heel shoes.
Another form of his sense of humor was as a prankster. Sometime in the early 1970s he was visiting an old friend, a vicar, in rural southwest England. Dad got dressed in the vicar’s uniform complete with a clerical collar. One of the vicar’s parishioners came by and said she needed to see the vicar right away. She was told that the vicar was out of town, but she could meet with the visiting vicar from the United States. So, Dad and the parishioner conversed in the vicar’s study. Sometime later, the parishioner was told that the American vicar, the very Rev. Paul Harris, was a complete hoax. Her reply: “But he gave such good advice.”
Dad was a devoted father to me and my brother Nick – always interested in our achievements, disappointments and in our health. When I was in England in 1974, studying at the London School of Economics, I got a call one evening from Dad in California. This was when international calls were not cheap. Why did he call? He wanted to be sure I was brushing my teeth properly and did I need a new toothbrush.
Speaking of Nick, he was Dad’s excellent partner in construction. Before he became an architect and at the age of nineteen, he built this studio. When our house was virtually destroyed by fire, Nick and Dad rebuilt and improved it.
Another part of his life was a teaching career that took him and his family from Albuquerque, New Mexico; Jamaica; New Paltz, New York; Santiago, Chile; Montclair, New Jersey; Bozeman, Montana and finally to Bolinas, California. My parents had the worst case of wanderlust in recorded history. I don’t think Dad really enjoyed being an art professor. But it was his duty to support the family and he did so without complaint. He greatly enjoyed working with his most gifted students – but I know how much he detested faculty meetings and would do virtually anything to get out of them.
In addition to his brief career as a cartoonist, Dad was a skilled short story writer. One of my favorites of his many short stories involves a scene in a foreign city. There is a rainstorm and several people – complete strangers – gather underneath a shelter. One man greets the others and shakes hands with each of them and then says: “How many more times can I perform that simple act? The doctors really don’t know. They don’t even know how I got this dreadful affliction. Less than a year ago, I, like yourselves, never thought of hands. Then came the blisters. Look at the insides of my hands…gnawed hollows and a few strings that can still juggle the fingers.” As the rainstorm was coming to an end, he put his hands -- palms up -- into the rain and threw his head back to have a good drink. ‘“In any case,” he said with a great smile that embraced everyone, “bad hands make good cups.”’
It might also be said that his mother’s death made a great artist.
Another fine attribute of Paul Harris’ character was his honesty. This is difficult to describe because his integrity was not just quiet, it was silent. I cannot recall a single instance in which he sat down with his sons to discuss the importance of telling the truth. Honesty was engrained in his soul. He set a marvelous but almost invisible example.
And so, who was this fellow Paul Harris? He was a tap dancer, a sailor, a cartoonist, a friend, a publisher, a mentor, a great and versatile artist, an art professor, a short story writer, an imposter, a loving husband, father, grandfather and a great-grandfather. What a marvelous life! In thinking about his life and peaceful death I am reminded of the words from Romeo and Juliet: “When he shall die, take him and cut him out into little stars and he shall make the face of heaven so fine that all the world will be in love with night and pay no worship to the garish sun.”