Your Neighbor | Milton Harr

Neighborhood: Longboat Harbour
Your neighbor since: 1996
Milton Harr’s life has been defined by a series of pivot points that he compares to forks in the road.

“You never know what would happen if you took the other one because you didn’t take that path. Some were good decisions, others were not. But I could not have led the life I did without embracing the choices I’ve made.”

One of the major turning points in Harr’s life was fighting for his country during World War II.

“I went in at 17,” he said. “It’s hard for the younger generation to understand the patriotic fervor that existed after Pearl Harbor. We were afraid that the war might end before we got out of high school. It didn’t.”

After D-Day in Normandy, Harr was stationed on a landing craft that transported German prisoners to England. The ship had a problem, so he was given leave and sent back to the U.S.

This allowed for another vital point in his life: When Harr returned to the U.S., he visited his uncle in New Jersey because many of his friends were still deployed. There, he met Florence, his wife of nearly 70 years.

“We became engaged on the second night,” said Harr, smiling.

While Florence went to Boston to meet Harr’s family, Harr was sent back overseas. On Feb. 19, three Marine divisions, including Harr’s, invaded the island of Iwo Jima.

“I ran into a Japanese rocket, and I remember looking down and just feeling something and seeing blood,” Harr said. “And the next thing I actually saw was Hawaii. I have no idea how they got me off the island, how they got me to Hawaii. I was 19 years old, and I knew I couldn’t see. Didn’t know if I had arms, legs, anything. It was a very difficult time.”

After many surgeries and months in the hospital, Harr finally married Florence May 19, 1945. The couple lived in Massachusetts, where Harr worked for the State Highway Department for four years. But he found the work boring and decided to go to college.

While raising three young children with Florence, Harr earned a bachelor’s degree in civil engineering in 1949 at Northeastern University, a master’s degree at Rutgers University in 1955, and his Ph.D. in 1958 from Purdue University, where he stayed on as a professor for 43 years.

Harr was a part of many groundbreaking consulting teams. He worked to keep the Leaning Tower of Pisa from tipping over, acted as a mediator among scientists when Mount St. Helens, in Washington, erupted, planned air raid shelters in Israel and even designed the pads for the Apollo Lunar Module on the moon.
But even the beauty he has seen around the world cannot compare to home.

“There are very few views in the world that you can live with and have the great comfort of the American society and all the things that we have available to us,” Harr said. “There just aren’t. We have it all here on little old Longboat Key.”

Contact Kelsey Grau at [email protected]