Deceased June 15, 2014
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50th Reunion book entry
In Memory
Doctor, clergyman, handyman, pacifist, activist, sailor, skier, birder—who matched Henry Harvey?
See him making house calls in snowstorms, rebuilding a bombed-out church in turbulent 1960s South, logging overnight jail time in Washington in an environmental demonstration.
In the service of others, he was still delivering Meals on Wheels at age 96.
Details of his remarkable life emerged from family members after his death June 15, 2014, aged 98, at his old home in Littleton, Mass. His wife, Marjorie, had died a year earlier.
Deerfield prep, Alpha Delta Phi, Phi Beta Kappa, Sphinx, Union Theological Seminary, Harvard Medical School—sterling credentials. But Henry was on his way long before academe. Good at carpentry, he built a still-standing garden house at age 13. He kept his basement shop humming late in his 90s.
Early in World War II, he went to unoccupied southern France with the American Friends Service Committee (Quakers) to help refugees from the Spanish Civil War. With America’s entry, he continued divinity studies in New York, visited Civilian Conservation Camps for conscientious objectors and served as a newly minted minister to three small parishes in rural Colorado.
He was a founder of Action Medical Associates, an organization with a Quaker background that aimed at providing moderately priced medical care. He volunteered for humanitarian projects in Mexico, Haiti and the Dominican Republic. Among many other roles, he was a trustee of the First Church Unitarian in Littleton.
His daughter, Sheridan Harvey, wrote, “My father had a good and long life. He was ready to go and pleased to be able to do so in comfort and at home with his family.” Other survivors are children Richard, Robin and Tim, eight grandchildren and nine great-grandchildren.
Not a trifle, class secretaries cherished him for always contributing a note.
George Bria ’38
