Edward Day Harris Jr. ’58

Edward Day Harris Jr. ’58, physician, researcher, educator and editor, died peacefully on May 21 at his son Chandler’s home in Thetford Center, Vermont, after a battle with a rare salivary gland cancer. Kind yet pointed in his views, Ted was a standout student and athlete in Camp Hill, Pennsylvania, growing up “an only child under the close scrutiny of my mother, a French and Latin teacher.” In Hanover, athletics precluded by injuries, he managed the basketball team under a tyrannical Doggie Julian, joined Psi Upsilon and was president of Casque & Gauntlet. After marrying Mary Ann Hayward in 1958, he earned his M.D. at Harvard and in 1970 returned to Hanover to study and teach rheumatology and raise three sons. Named medical chair at Rutgers in 1983, he moved to head the medical department at Stanford in 1987. On retirement in 2003 Ted became executive secretary of Alpha Omega Alpha, the medical honorary society; edited its acclaimed non-technical quarterly Pharos; and was academic secretary to Stanford University. He edited eight editions of the seminal Textbook of Rheumatology and for his work in rheumatoid arthritis was awarded the Presidential Gold Medal of the American College of Rheumatology. Ted is survived by his fiancée, Eileen, sons Ned, Tom and Chandler and four grandchildren. A memorial was planned for late summer in Palo Alto, California. An avid outdoorsman, musician and traveler, Ted loved to sail, clam and golf at his second home on Martha’s Vineyard—and stay connected with Dartmouth and medical friends. One admirer’s fitting eulogy: “Ted was remarkable.”