Harry Allen Marlow : Turning
Points in the life of a Bell High School Graduate (Winter,
’34)
By Gail Marlow Taylor
We all hold
fast in our memory those decisions that unexpectedly turn life’s course. Young
Harry Marlow faced one of those decisions in 1938, four years after graduating
from Bell High
School.
Harry had come
to Bell from
Burwell,
Nebraska, where he was born on April 14, 1918, the youngest of Lottie
and William Marlow’s four children. When he was only an infant, his family moved
to Bell,
California, next door to Lottie’s sister,
Stella Ingram, and her family. Growing up, Harry was especially close to his
cousins, the Ingram sisters, Sally,
Estelle, Mary, and their neighbors,
Jack and Virginia Phinney. When
Harry wasn’t working on a project in the Phinney’s backyard woodshop, he was
undoubtedly reading a book. He was an avid reader and an enthusiastic Buck
Rogers fan.
With his
friends, cousins, and sisters, Frances
(S ’29) and Florence, and older
brother Stanley, Harry’s social life
revolved around family, Bell
Friends
Church, and
Bell High
School. In high school, he was in the glee club and
chorus, taught by “Pop” Hermann.
After graduation, Harry delivered the Huntington Park Signal, L. A. Examiner, and then was a Postal
Telegraph messenger, a milk man, and, finally, a grocery clerk in Arvo Fallon’s Market. Arvo and his wife Frances Fouke were among
Bell’s first graduates.
The summer of
1938 brought a turning point that would change the rest of his life. His good
friend, Bill Stivers had started
attending Los Angeles’ new
Pepperdine
College. Bill and his mother urged
Harry to continue his education every time they walked into Arvo’s Market. The
rest, as they say, is history.
And history
intervened again in 1941, with two life-changing events. First, on October 31,
yes, Halloween, classmate Kenneth
Hahn introduced Harry to USC graduate student Virginia Brewster, at an
International Relations Conference at the
University of
Redlands. They soon had much in
common, discovering shared interests in reading, learning, and seeing the world.
But on 7 December 1941, the
bombing of Pearl Harbor brought the
United States
into World War II. Having no deferment, Harry, now a senior and president of the
student body, enlisted in the U.S. Army Air Corps.
He soon
deployed to
England with the
49th Fighter Squadron, and was trained as a cryptographer. Their next
deployment, to
Algeria, was
undertaken with the greatest secrecy in preparation for the North Africa
Campaign. A year and a half later, Harry, now a tech sergeant, was appointed a
Second Lieutenant in the Signal Corps with duty as a communication security officer. After
his return to the States in 1944, he and Virginia were married and moved
immediately to Champaign,
Illinois where he had been assigned as an
instructor in the Cryptographic
Officers Training
School at nearby Chanute Field. He was separated
from the service as a First Lieutenant in November 1945, returning to
Los Angeles with wife and daughter
Gail.
Harry was
graduated from Pepperdine
College in 1946 with a major in
social science and a minor in natural science. Then, as a graduate student at
the University of
Southern California, he became a
research assistant to the Dean of the
School of Public
Administration, and in time was appointed director
of the University Civic Center Division in Los Angles. This program provided
advanced education and training for public employees. In 1950, he received his
Master of Public Administration Degree. Committed to civic service as well as
education, he served on the Inglewood City Council from 1950 to 1952.
1954 was to be
another major turning point for the Marlows, when USC was selected by the U.S.
Foreign Operations Administration to assist the
University of
Teheran to establish an Institute for
Administrative Affairs. Harry was assigned to head a team of USC professors as
co-director of the new Institute. For the next four years, he and his family
lived and worked in
Iran.
Virginia taught at the American
Dependents’ School, which their son and daughter attended. His responsibilities
included planning and implementation of a public and business administrative
management program for 400-700 students, training and developing permanent
Iranian professional and administrative staff, and establishing a center for
research and training in the selection and management of personnel. The Iranian
government recognized his many contributions. In 1957, the Imperial Iranian Air
Force presented him with the Gold Medal of Cooperation. In 1958 he was awarded
the Gold Medal, Educational Supreme Order, from the Ministry of Education for
services in the development of higher education in
Iran.
Leaving
Iran in 1958,
the Marlow family then moved to Geneva,
Switzerland, where Harry,
anticipating a career in an international organization, did post-graduate study
in International Affairs at the
University of
Geneva.
Virginia taught at the
International
School, where the children were
enrolled. In 1960, Harry accepted what turned out to be his last formal teaching
position, professor in the Graduate School of Public and International Affairs
at the University of
Pittsburgh.
In a major
career shift, Harry accepted the call to be Chief Deputy to Los Angeles County
Supervisor Kenneth Hahn, a position he would hold from 1963 to 1987. At his
retirement, in January 1987, Harry was honored with a banquet at the Dorothy
Chandler Pavilion and was presented with a Los
Angeles County scroll
of commendation for his twenty-five years as Chief Deputy. Some of the
achievements in which he played a part included: Los
Angeles County’s
freeway emergency telephone system, the Sybil Brand women’s prison, Martin
Luther King, Jr./Drew Medical Center, the Los Angeles County Paramedic Program,
and the financing of the regional rapid transit system.
Retirement
brings about changes for all of us. Both Harry and Virginia continued to be
active in civic and church affairs, but now they had more time to travel and
enjoy their grandchildren. They moved to Leisure World in
Laguna Hills, where they celebrated
their fiftieth wedding anniversary in 1994. In 2001, after
Virginia passed away, Harry moved
to Freedom
Village in Lake
Forest. He maintains contact with his lifetime friends
from the 49th Fighter Squadron,
Pepperdine
College, and USC, and does volunteer
work for the National Alliance for the Mentally Ill, in addition to actively
supporting St. George’s Episcopal
Church and serving a term as president of the Residents’ Board at
Freedom
Village. Continuing his lifelong love
of learning, he is currently taking classes in writing, exercise, and computers
through Saddleback
College, enjoys travel, and takes an
active and much-appreciated role in the lives of his two children, five
grandchildren, and seven great-grandchildren.
Addendum: Writing this account was an enlightening and
enjoyable experience which I could not have had without the help of Sally Ingram
Mitchell, my husband Charles, and of course Harry, who checked every word.
Gail Taylor
5 Mar.
2006