WILLIAM HARBY

1927 - 2015

Harby, William Whose careers in art and engineering have alternated and overlapped for much of his life, died on Monday at Beth Israel Hospital in Boston.The cause was pneumonia after a long struggle with Parkinson's disease. Born January 28, 1927 in Brooklyn, New York of Isaac Harby and Isabel Solomon Harby, Mr. Harby was educated at the Loomis School and Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he received two degrees, Bachelor of Science in Business and Engineering Administration and later in Mechanical Engineering. After serving as an ambulance driver in the American Field Service and US army from 1952 to 1954, he studied art in London and Paris, as part of the GI Bill, planting the seeds for a later second career in the visual arts. He worked as a maintenance engineer, design engineer, consultant, and structural analyst in the burgeoning tech industry in and around Boston for such companies as Raytheon, Advanced Research and Nabisco. From 1965 to 1985 he served as program manager at the Harvard College Observatory for the Orbiting Solar Observatory, a joint project with NASA and the Skylab Program. Retiring from Harvard in mid-career, he became a full-time artist working on both painting and sculpture, depending on the seasons, the weather, and travel plans. He mastered working with marble during a residency at Carrara, Italy. He exhibited frequently, and his work is in many private and institutional collections. In 1989, working with Laura Catanzaro and C. R. Rogers, he won a competition for the design of the Vietnam Veterans' Memorial in Green Park, Worcester, Massachusetts, which was completed in 2002. He is survived by his wife, Marilyn Pappas, a sister, Ann Harby Cunningham, of Wellesley, Massachusetts, his son, Stephen William Harby of Santa Monica, California, four step-children, and numerous cousins and nephews. A gathering of remembrance will be held at his home on Sun. Nov. 8.