Robert Harrison, who blended poetry with careers in teaching, transportation, dies at 80

Poet, photographer and keeper of the flame for Long Island literature, Bob Harrison led a life as lyrical as any of his stanzas.

In "Outlived," published in an anthology just before his death on July 6 at age 80, the East Meadow resident wrote of growing older.

"They did not age like good wine, but suffered from the bubbles of life, gasping for pure air stuck in a bottle," his poem begins. But he ended it optimistically, saying: "But they still claim the victory of living, defying the odds stacked against them, dreaming each night of a better tomorrow."

Harrison saw hundreds of his poems and three plays published, along with Oyster Bay Historical Society articles on such topics as Long Island’s military history and African American heritage. He also had thousands of photographs published, exhibited and gathered in institutional collections.

Much of this he did while managing full-time careers as a BOCES special-education teacher in the early 1970s, and afterward with MTA Long Island Bus (now Nassau Inter-County Express), retiring in 2006 as manager of its command center.

Harrison melded these disparate selves with "a quirky sense of humor," said his friend Judy Turek, of East Meadow, the Walt Whitman Birthplace Association’s Long Island Poet of the Year 2019. "He was always smiling and welcoming, and involved in a lot of different things."

"I don’t think people on Long Island appreciate the rich history we have here of poets and writers," said 2017 Long Island Poet of the Year Tammy Nuzzo-Morgan, head of the Long Island Poetry and Literature Repository, to which Harrison contributed his papers. "Musicians, OK. Actors, yes. But we’ve kind of forgotten about the poets and writers. And Bob was so fierce about not letting us forget."

Harrison, who had been suffering from the rare autoimmune disease ANCA-associated vasculitis, succumbed to a stroke at St. Francis Hospital & Heart Center, in Roslyn, said his son Kevin Harrison, of Oceanside.

"He worked a lot of hours but made every single one of my Little League games," Kevin Harrison son recalled. "And he loved the outdoors. On our vacations we would visit family somewhere and then find a national park or someplace like that for his photography." Back at home, he said, "He would take me along on his hikes around Mill Pond or Caumsett State Park as he took photos."

Robert Louis Harrison was born March 11, 1944, in Oceanside. His father, William Harrison, was a Nassau County bus driver and union president, and mother, Roberta Louise Clark Harrison, worked at Airborne Instruments Laboratories, soldering electrical components. With his older brother, Thomas, Harrison was raised in Hicksville and then Syosset, graduating high school there in 1961.

Enlisting in the Air Force, he served at Holloman AFB in White Sands, New Mexico, rising to the rank of E3 (now Airman First Class). There he worked as a military photographer before his discharge in 1965. He went on to earn an associate degree from Nassau Community College, a bachelor’s in history from Stony Brook University and, in 1975, a master’s in instructional communication from Hofstra University.

His first published poem, he had said, was a piece about horse racing that appeared in Newsday. A Mets fan, he began publishing baseball poetry in Baseball Hobby News and soon branched into literary magazines and anthologies. His poems were collected in books including "Green Fields and White Lines," which was published, and "29 Poems and a Play," which was self-published.

Harrison’s photographs appear in dozens of books, and the Hofstra University Library holds the Robert L. Harrison Long Island Photograph Collection. His accolades include Hofstra’s George M. Estabrook Distinguished Service Award.

In addition to his son Kevin, he is survived by another son, Roger Harrison, of Laurel, Maryland; his wife, Dorothy Vokoun Harrison, of East Meadow, with whom he celebrated his 50th anniversary last year; and two grandchildren.

Viewings will be held Sunday, from 2 to 4 p.m. and 7 to 9 p.m. at O’Shea Funeral Home in East Meadow. A service will be held there Monday at 9:30 a.m., followed by burial at Calverton National Cemetery. Donations may be made to the Long Island Poetry & Literature Repository. A tribute is set to take place Dec. 8 at the Mid-Island Y JCC in Plainview.