While growing up in a small mill town outside of Pittsburgh, Penn., Walter Harrison, president of the University of Hartford, didn’t realize that his father was living a life much like the Jimmy Stewart character in the classic movie, “It’s A Wonderful Life.”
Harrison’s grandfather, an immigrant from Lithuania, founded a clothing store called Harrison’s Mens and Boys Wear in Tarentum, Penn. Although Harrison’s father and uncle helped out in the family business as they were growing up, it was his grandfather’s desire that his sons attend college and work elsewhere.
“My grandfather had a theory that neither of his sons should work for him. He thought that they should get a job and learn from other people,” Harrison said.
So Harrison’s father set off from his hometown during the 1930s to work for Gimbels (a large department store) and to work as a private secretary. During World War II, his father then joined the Army. Upon his return from the war, his grandfather wasn’t well.
“[My father] never intended to take over the store,” Harrison recalled. “I’m living the life he would have liked to have lived. A lot like “It’s A Wonderful Life.”
Although Harrison’s own life began much like his father’s, his career path took him in a very different direction.
He began working for the family’s clothing store in 1954 at the age of eight, making gift boxes in the store’s attic.
“I spent, what seemed to me an endless amount of time in this unimproved attic above this old-fashioned brick store, making boxes,” Harrison said.
He received his pay in cash, in a small pay envelope, something fairly common at the time, he said. His mother, the store’s bookkeeper, would write the number of hours he worked on the outside of the envelope and then place the appropriate amount of cash inside it.
Harrison’s parents urged him to save his earnings, even though it was his desire to “spend everything I got.” They even started a savings account for him at a very young age, he recalled.
The bank was located across the street, and also the railroad tracks that ran through the center of town, where Harrison did deposit some portion of his earnings and “watched it grow.”
Over time, Harrison was given more duties at the store. When he became old enough, he graduated from box making to stock work. Eventually, he became a sales person.
“Every weekend and every summer growing up — and before Christmas — from 8 to 9-years old until 21, even after my father died, I worked at the store,” he said. His father passed away when Harrison was still a boy.
The job “did teach me to value hard work, and I learned a lot about discipline. A lot of what we did was not particularly glamorous. I also learned that I wanted a job where I didn’t have to stand on my feet all day,” he said.
Harrison is very grateful for the sacrifices his family made that allowed him to attain the current post he holds today as the head of the University of Hartford.
“My grandfather starts as an immigrant peddler. My father goes to college, but has to return to be a merchant due to circumstances. And I get to go to college, and am fortunate enough to go to graduate school and become a professor, eventually to become president of a college. I feel fortunate to be doing what I am doing. I feel privileged, in a way, that they did pave the way for me to do what I do.”
