Dick Harmon: Organizer, Father, Visionary

Dick and Carole Harmon

Remembering Dick Harmon
 
  My early encounters with Dick Harmon at the Industrial Areas Foundation (IAF) office in Chicago in 1970 reflected my respect for the role he played in the organizing work of IAF.  His status as a central figure in the IAF pantheon of story tellers and agitators was undisputed.  Dick emerged as a prime mover in the career I was plunging in to.  After Saul Alinsky died, Dick served as one pole of the Chambers/Harmon duality in which styles contrasted and visions sometimes conflicted.
  My wife Kaz, herself swept into the IAF vortex working with the Citizens Action Program, credits Dick with bringing the two of us together (and told him so at Ed Chambers’s funeral) for what was to become our lifelong partnership.
  For a serious man Dick had a great sense of humor.  (He managed to incorporate Lenny Bruce into some of the early training sessions he led!).  For a humorous man he held fast to a serious commitment to the difficult, sometimes tedious work of relationship building and community organizing.
  Some of his qualities (virtues) appeared fully formed to me only as we reconnected toward the end of his (and my) life.  Our conversations ranged from the deeply personal to projects we were working on that piqued our mutual interests.  In truth, neither of us had given up on organizing as a life’s calling.  Both of us were acutely aware of the limitations of our own efforts (not to mention IAF’s).
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  Now, in the twilight of my own life, I’m filled with gratitude for having known Dick Harmon.  For over five decades his generous spirit and uncompromising integrity always shone through .  I’m especially grateful that he and I were able to share so much in our later years by telephone and written word bringing full circle our relationship in a way entirely unexpected and therefore cherished by me as a grace-filled gift.
  Dick Harmon figures prominently in early chapters of my book published by Greg Pierce and ACTA Publications - Sometimes David Wins: Organizing to Overcome Fated Outcomes.  My spirits rose when Dick praised my efforts to capture some of the highs and lows of the organizing work to which we both committed so deeply.
  Rest in peace, mentor, colleague, and friend, Dick Harmon.