Emmett Clyde Harris, loving husband, father, grandfather, brother, cousin, and uncle, died peacefully at Asbury Towers Retirement Community, Greencastle, Indiana on September 20, 2012. He was 92 years old.His funeral service will be held 3 p.m., Sunday, September 23, 2012, at the Oak Grove United Methodist Church with the Rev. Ben Sims officiating. Burial will take place in the church cemetery.
Emmett was born on March 24, 1920, in the Bachelor Community in the Clubfoot Creek area of Craven County, NC. He was the youngest son of Louise Nixon Harris and William Harris. Two brothers, Haywood and Leon, predeceased him. Emmett attended grade school in the Bachelor Community School and graduated from Beaufort High School with the class of 1936. He then attended the Naval Academy Preparatory School in 1937. With the onset of WWII, he transitioned into the Navy and became a deck officer. He served in the Presidential Honor Guard for President Franklin D. Roosevelt in summer of 1939, and became a Chief Warrant Officer in 1945. Following the war, with the help of his favorite Beaufort High School teacher, Lina Duncan, he enrolled in Columbia University through the G.I. Bill, where he studied International Business. He attended Columbia University from 1946-1950, with a year's study in Paris, France at the Ecole des Sciences Politiques (1948-1949). Upon graduating from Columbia with Phi Beta Kappa honors, he began a long career at Citibank (1950-1980), writing a thesis for the Stonier Graduate School of Banking at Rutgers University in 1964, and eventually becoming Chief Inspection Officer and Assistant Vice President for International Affairs. He met his wife, Pierrette, in New York City in the summer of 1967. They married on December 30, 1967 and went to raise two children in Paris (France), Geneva (Switzerland), Greenwich, Connecticut, and Charlotte, NC. His international banking career took him to the far reaches of the world, from Hong Kong to Mumbai, Paris to the Bahamas, London to South America, and many other beautiful places he continued to marvel at. When he retired from Citibank, he joined the faculty at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, teaching International and Personal Finance in their business school from 1980-1990. In 2003, he and his wife moved to Bloomington, Indiana in order to be closer to their daughter and grandchildren.
He is survived by his loving and dearly loved wife of 44 years, Pierrette; his daughter, Anne Harris; his son-in-law, Michael Mackenzie; his grandchildren, Oliver, Iris, and Eleanor; his son, Steven Harris; his daughter-in-law, Gina Faranda; grandson, Henry; sister, Ruth Dotger; sister-in-law, Lula Harris; and his beloved nieces and nephews, Sadie-Louise and Roger Alexander, Denard and Kay Harris, Bill and Debbi Harris, Sylvia Wheatly, Ilene Adams, Denson and Debbie Harris, Corinne Hendrix, Bill Dotger, and Lynn Dwyer, their children and grandchildren, and many cousins.
A visitation will be held Saturday, September 22, 2012, at Brooks Funeral Home from 5 to 7 p.m.
In lieu of flowers, donations may be made to the Oak Grove United Methodist Church, care of secretary, Barry Murray, 110 Long Creek Drive, Havelock, NC 28532.
Access online obituary and Internet condolences through www.brooksfuneralhomeandcrematory.com.
Arrangements are by Brooks Funeral Home and Crematory Inc. of Morehead City.
