Dr. William Asbury Harris
Professor of Greek and Latin, 1901-1941
Comments made by Dr. Fred Anderson on January 8, 2006 upon the addition of Dr. W.A. Harris to the University of Richmond Trustee's Honor Roll of Distinguished Faculty, Administrators and Staff.
William Asbury Harris actually grew up on the campus of old Richmond College where his father, the legendary 19th-century prof, H.H. Harris, was one of the main pillars of the old college. Let me share a little about the father. Henry Herbert Harris was a graduate of Richmond College, Class of 1856; and after the school was destroyed in the War, he was among those who petitioned the Baptist General Association of Virginia to re-open the college. Immediately upon its revival, the college turned to Harris to fill the position of Professor of Greek and German. It was said of the father that he could teach any subject in the college at a moment’s notice. As the long-time professor of Greek, the father earned the nickname of “Socrates” or “Old Soc”. His reputation and his contribution lasted through the ages; and in 1980 – over 80 years after his death – he was among those placed on the first listing for the UR Trustees’ Honor Roll.
William A. Harris was an infant when his father became professor of Greek. The younger Harris also attended Richmond College, receiving bachelor’s and master’s degrees. He earned his PhD at Johns Hopkins in – guess what subject – Greek; and in 1901, a century ago, he returned to his alma mater to fill the position left vacant by the death of his father. For the rest of his life, William Harris was professor of Greek or professor of Latin. When the school moved from downtown to Westhampton, Harris made the transition; and the Harris family lived at the head of the lake.
Woodford Hackley, who also taught languages, described his colleague as “one of those noble souls one meets only once in a lifetime.” He explained: “Dr. Harris was a beloved and honored teacher, a kind friend, and an abiding influence over his students and associates. He was modest and unassuming, both gentle and strong, with an unfailing sense of humor and a deep appreciation of the good, the true, and the beautiful. He was a lover of humanity. Greek was his subject, but he taught much more than Greek; he taught the finer things of life. His students probably forgot the Greek they learned in his classes, but they never forgot him or his philosophy of life.” And then, Dr. Hackley paid his friend the ultimate compliment by adding: “His life truly exemplified the spirit of the University of Richmond as projected by its founders.”
William A. Harris belonged to that community which founded, nourished and enabled the University of Richmond. He was a Virginia Baptist. He was active in all phases of denominational life: for thirty years he was the person who wrote the minutes for the Foreign Mission Board of the Southern Baptist Convention; for about thirty years he was president of the board of Shanghai University, a Baptist school in China; for forty years he was a deacon at his church, Grace Street Baptist Church of Richmond; for many years he led his church’s Sunday school and taught Bible classes; and for about thirty years he was the secretary (or director) of the Virginia Baptist Historical Society which his father also had served as secretary. In this last capacity, he was one of my predecessors. He served the Virginia Baptist Historical Society before its present director was even born and yet I can say that not a day passes that I am not in his debt. I will come across some reference to some archival item which was added to our collection during Dr. Harris’ tenure.
The editor of a Richmond newspaper (and we can only guess that it was Dr. Freeman) once observed that W.A. Harris, the son, followed his father in the same field at the same institution, “circumstances that might have frustrated a man of less character and less determination.” The editor commented that “always W.A. Harris had to meet comparison with H.H. Harris, the father” yet added that after four decades had passed, “at the University of Richmond every man who had been fortunate enough to choose that subject of study was an acknowledged and enthusiastic debtor of William A. Harris, that gentle Hellenist. The editor concluded with the following: “The scholarly reticence of the noble, high-minded teacher in not forcing his interpretation beyond the text, coupled with his manifest but half-repressed enthusiasm for the glory of the language, made a student a breathless listener on tiptoe where ‘heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard are sweeter.’”
William A. Harris died in 1945 at age 80. And now, all these years later, the son joins the father on the Honor Roll.