Reflection, introspection on Father’s Day

By Donald H. Harrison

SAN DIEGO — Sunday being Father’s Day, I couldn’t help but think about a conversation held approximately 111 years ago between a son and his father.

The father’s first name was Velvel, the name he had been given in Lithuania well before he immigrated to the United States during the 1880s when American ports were open to all who were healthy and wished to work hard. The first name of the son was Meyer. He was born in the United States, was a talented draftsman, a good student, and in 1909, earned a university degree as a professional architect.

Sometime before Meyer’s formal graduation, he sat down with his father and explained to him how he saw his way forward as a freshly minted architect. He told Velvel that the name that would be written on his certificate of graduation would play an important part in his future as an architect.

If nothing were done, he said, the name on the official document would read “Meyer J. Harowitz,” Architect.

People thinking of having their new homes, or apartment buildings, or commercial structures designed would look at that name and think to themselves, “Harowitz, he’s a Jew!” While some fellow Jews might seek a landsman out, many non-Jewish companies might never consider him further, no matter how talented he might be.

So, he told his father, he’d like to change the family name from “Harowitz” to “Harrison.”

“Witz” in Slavic languages means “son,” Meyer went on to say, so phonetically, Harri-son would continue to honor the name Haro-witz. Furthermore, he went on to argue, Harrison is a good American-sounding name. Wasn’t it true that just about the time Velvel had arrived in America, that the President of the United States was named Benjamin Harrison? And hadn’t that President’s grandfather been named President William Henry Harrison? And wasn’t William Henry Harrison’s own father another Benjamin Harrison, who had signed the Declaration of Independence?

Nu, asked Velvel, what was Meyer proposing?

We should change our names together, Meyer pleaded. You can change from Velvel Harowitz to William Harrison, and I can change from Meyer J. Harowitz to M. Joseph Harrison. On the forms, father, — there always are forms — where in the future I will have to list the name of my father, I will list you as William Harrison, because you in fact will be William Harrison.

And so the agreement was made. Together father and son legally changed their names to make them more American sounding. M. Joseph Harrison became a moderately successful architect, designing homes and buildings in New York City; Westchester County, New York, and in parts of neighboring Connecticut.

Meyer’s first son, Martin Benjamin Harrison, was born in 1910, the first in the family line to carry the Harrison name at birth. His younger brother Henry Harrison unfortunately died of tuberculosis before he ever could marry or have children.

Martin B. Harrison was my father. If his dream came true, he would have been a doctor. But when the Depression and then World War II came, he had to go to work in other fields — pharmaceutical sales and aircraft construction to support his family — and finally, in the post-war period, he settled into a permanent career in textile sales.

My older brother William was of our family’s second generation to carry the Harrison name through adulthood. If our prayers are answered, Billy will get to celebrate his 80th birthday on June 27. Now in a Los Angeles area nursing home, he suffers from both Alzheimer’s Disease and from the coronavirus. He has a daughter and a son.

I was the younger of Martin and Alice Harrison’s two children — the “Donny” to the older “Billy.” I grew up to become a journalist, and Nancy and I have two children, our daughter Sandi and her brother, David, the latter of whom is the third generation to carry the Harrison name through adulthood. David is the owner of small businesses in the San Francisco Bay area. If you are ever up in the Lafayette area, please stop by Zoonie’s, a candy store that he purchased only a short time before the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic. Hopefully, it will prosper once the pandemic is declared officially over. David has two children, Brian, representing the fourth generation of male Harrisons, and his younger sister Sara. They are both school children.

Often, I wonder what would have happened if Velvel had refused to become a William, and insisted that he and his son remain the Harowitz family. How different might Meyer’s life have been, and how different the lives of his descendants!

Amid this time of deep introspection about racial justice and the Black Lives Matter movement, I also wonder what life would have been like if Velvel and Meyer couldn’t have changed their outward identity so easily. What if their identity had not been a question of what name they called themselves, but by what race–or color–other people identified them?

I realize that along with my parents and children, my family has been the beneficiary of a choice that never was even an option for other people, no matter how good, how smart, or talented they might have been.

*
Donald H. Harrison is editor of San Diego Jewish World. He may be contacted via donald.harrison@sdjewishworld.com