Dr. Harry Harvey Bash (1/25/1926 – 2-7-17) was born in Berlin, Germany. His family escaped to the United States in November 1938, barely ahead of serious Nazi persecution. He grew up in New York City, attended high school, joined the Boy Scouts and the Ethical Society, “hung out” with a Greenwich Village theater group and held various part-time jobs. Following graduation he found varieties of employment (including elevator operator at the New York Stock Exchange), and eventually landed a job as a mechanical draftsman, thinking of a possible post-war career in architecture. In early 1945, he entered the U. S. Army Air Force, was granted United States citizenship (while at Scott Air Force Base) and, after training, was sent overseas and assigned to Tempelhof Air Base in Berlin. Discharged in 1948 with the rank of sergeant, he entered the University of Chicago, sustained by the GI Bill and a part-time print-shop job. The curriculum was challenging and he struggled to complete a Baccalaureate degree in Liberal Arts in 1951.

Returning to New York and having decided by then on an academic career in sociology, he gradually accumulated thirty credit hours in sociology at Columbia University at night, while working days in a Fifth Avenue bookstore. Also, being a serious jazz devotee, he enjoyed gigs playing piano with a very short-lived trio, and did solo “cocktail” piano stints in a few mid-town piano lounges. In 1954 he was admitted to a Masters program in sociology at Indiana University, where he was awarded a TA position. While there, he was active in an ACLU chapter, was elected president of the campus NAACP, and met and dated Carrie E Street. After completing his course work, he took a leave to replenish his finances by working for a motivational research firm in New York, and to research his M.A. thesis topic. With his Masters degree completed in 1958, and neither he nor Carrie able to imagine not doing so, they decided to get married! Since interracial marriages were then still illegal under Indiana’s miscegenation law, they married in New York, and preceded to Philadelphia where he had been admitted to doctoral studies at the University if Pennsylvania with a TA award, and she worked for the Population Research Center and completed her own degree with honors. While working on his dissertation, Bash held a position as lecturer at Harcum Junior College in Bryn Mawr, taught a sociology course at Temple University and one in the summer semester at Arcadia University (then Beaver College).

In 1966 he accepted a position at the University of Missouri-St Louis, a then newly established campus. With three other new colleagues, he was charged with building a top-quality Sociology Department which, in time, grew to include fifteen Regular sociology faculty and several Adjuncts. While at UM-St Louis, Bash served as Department Chair for an aggregate of tewn years, as associate editor for The Sociological Quarterly and the Quarterly Journal of Ideology. His publications include two mongraphs: (a) “Sociology, Race and Ethnicity: A Critique of American Ideological Intrusions Upon Sociological Theory” (1979), and (b) “Social Problems & Social Movements: An Exploration Into The Sociological Construction of Alternative Realities” (1995), and numerous articles and reviews in American and European scholarly journals. Effective Fall 1992, he opted for an attractive “early” retirement program, but continued teaching in the Department on a part-time basis through 2001. During that time and since then, he continued research pursuits that led to invited encyclopedia entries, a contribution to an anthology, and a 2006 article in an academic journal. He also published a non-academic book: “Stuff ‘n’ Nonsense: A Hodge-Podge of Whimsical, Sober and Politically Incorrect Musings” (2011, 2013). In 2007 Carrie was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s and, refusing to put her into a nursing home, he became her sole 24/7 caregiver. On March 29, 2015, he lost Carrie after more than 56 precious years of a happy marriage! He is survived by several nieces and nephews.