The youth mentor who used Pink Floyd to teach life lessons

Bill E. Harris queued up “The Wall” and asked his 10-year-old son to sit.

He wasn’t just introducing his son to Pink Floyd’s famous album and musical for the pop culture references, though that was important too. It was time for a life lesson.

Harris cooked up an analogy to explain the project. Imagine you start your life in a lush green field with a big blue sky. You’re totally free — to be yourself, to take in the beauty of the world. And then society starts putting bricks around you. At first they surround your feet. And then, over time, the stacks grow so tall you can no longer see the grass and the clouds.

Society will try to make you closed off and disconnected from the world, he told his son Fagan Harris. Don’t let it.

Fagan — who grew up to become a powerful Maryland politico and now heads the Abell Foundation — never forgot the three-hour talk. And he never forgot how he saw his father live by that philosophy, always charting his own path, even when it was difficult. Through his work supporting students at Job Corps, Bill left thousands of young adults in Maryland and beyond with the same life advice.

Bill Harris, who also worked in recent years as a grant manager for Baltimore City, died Oct. 6 of septic shock stemming from pneumonia. He was 68.

He was born June 19, 1958, on a military base in Germany while his father was serving in the Air Force. The family — his parents and two older sisters — moved back to Alabama, where his parents were from, when he was a toddler. They relocated to Georgia when Bill was in middle school.

The redheaded, left-handed, freckle-faced child was known for exploring nature and using his wild imagination, Fagan said. Bill was “the ultimate autodidact” with insatiable curiosity, his son said. After high school, he majored in psychology at Georgia Southwestern State University.

Bill started his lengthy career with Job Corps in 1980 as a residential adviser. There, he met his future wife, Marie. He fell in love with her and her two kids, Ezell and Anne Marie. They were both mavericks, their son said, who wanted to see a world beyond Georgia and live an adventurous life.

But it wasn’t that simple. They grew up in the segregated South, and interracial relationships weren’t widely accepted. Bill was white, and Marie was Black. Bill always said he felt kinship with Black neighbors because he related to feeling different, Fagan said.

“He was a tremendously empathetic person who always had a heart for the underdog and the outsider and the marginalized,” Fagan said.

But others didn’t feel the same. When Marie got pregnant, Bill gave up the life he’d known to start their family. A month before Marie was due, the couple packed up a car and headed to California for work opportunities.

The family moved several times before settling in Baltimore when Fagan was about 5. By then, he had a younger brother, Allie. Meanwhile, Bill poured everything into Job Corps to work his way up the ranks and support his family.

He took on counseling, orientation and program management roles, then became director of Old Dominion Job Corps Center. He was like the teenager whisperer, Fagan said.

Bill later became a vice president for several firms working with the U.S. Department of Labor, which oversees Job Corps. He shaped national curricula and programming.

“He’d be brought into these facilities that’d be really struggling and then, in short order, every time, turn it around,” Fagan said. “He was amazing at building culture. He was amazing at building process.”

He and Marie held their children to high standards, but they made time for fun. Allie remembers his father taking the boys to practice baseball often at the local field. They’d do yard work, go swimming and play video games together. Bill was a formidable “Mario” player, no matter the game, Allie said.

As the men grew older, they got to know each other as friends. When they went to restaurants, Bill usually ordered something unconventional. They talked about music, especially Steely Dan, and Bill’s appreciation for the golden age of Hollywood. He would share his latest discoveries or take a trip down memory lane.

“He was a man of all the stories,” Allie said. “He could captivate a room, and they were always funny or entertaining or dicey or wild.”

Bill enjoyed the same relationships with his five nieces, grandchildren and great-grandchildren. His granddaughter Serafina Stubbs grew up wondering why “Popi” would quiz her on random words or ask her to answer his questions again and again. But now, as a young adult, she understands.

“I appreciate all the times I gave the wrong answer or said ‘I don’t know,’ because it gave me the opportunity to be taught something from him that I did not think of before,” she said.

Jamari Porter, his great-grandson, lived with Bill this summer while he was completing an internship. Bill was the “most funny, blunt, self-aware person I’ve ever met” and reminded him he had many lessons to learn, he said.

“He helped me realize my potential, and he poured so much into me,” Porter said.

Bill was always learning too, loved ones said. When Marie died about nine years ago, he was beyond devastated. Slowly, he learned to rebuild and find joy again.

He met Lisa Emore online and fell in love a second time. They traveled and went to concerts. Bill taught her college football. He was a massive Alabama fan.

“We were never old,” Emore said. “We were young in spirit.”

The week Bill died, his family gathered to share stories. Emore’s son didn’t know him well but listened intently as Fagan and Allie talked of their father’s exquisite taste (in everything) or mastery of the air guitar.

And then he said: “You know, when I get as old as Bill, I hope I’m that interesting.”

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