Welcome to What We Remember, our reader-submitted obituary series. Submit your story for next Sunday’s installment here.
Dwight Harris, 103
A wish fulfilled by his children
Dwight Harris was born in 1922 and raised in Fitchburg, Massachusetts. He graduated from Worcester Polytechnic Institute in 1944 and worked as a product designer at Bendix, Skinner Valve (where he met his future wife), Winchester Electronics and Lux Clock.
He married Catherine Marie Corliss in 1953, and in 1961 moved his family to the small town of Woodstock, New York, to work at Rotron. He was a prolific and brilliant inventor whose specialty was solving problems that no other engineer would tackle.
Dwight and his wife raised his three children to be independent, lifelong learners. After his wife died in 2016, Dwight devoted his time to helping others. For his 103rd birthday, he led an exercise class at his senior residence.
Dwight’s wish for his children was that they should be happy and make a contribution to society. He passed away knowing that they had each fulfilled that wish.
Dwight Edgar Harris was a product designer and engineer. He died Feb. 7 in Erlanger, Kentucky. — By his daughter Sue Kozlowski
Martha Bass, 89
Night hike in a cloud forest
Mother was a Texas girl and chaplain’s wife, a homemaker who also served as a school librarian. She embroidered, volunteered, baked bread and cooked the best “clean out the refrigerator” soup.
But only in the last year of her life did I realize that she was also an adventurer. I asked what she thought about my father joining the Army decades earlier. “The pay and the health insurance were good,” she said, “and it sounded like an adventure.”
Saturdays in Germany were spent exploring Roman ruins. Retirement meant missionary trips to China, Hungary, Turkey, India. Or living in Antwerp for nine months as missionaries. Or a night hike in a cloud forest — with a walker.
One of her last questions, when she couldn’t get from the bed to her wheelchair with confidence, was whether I thought she could take a Mississippi River cruise. She was eager for one more adventure.
Martha Latham Bass was a librarian, wife and mother. She died May 29 in Evergreen, Colorado. — By her daughter, Elizabeth Richards
Burton Knight, 56
A friend of the trees
When my idiosyncratic Burton was 5 months old, I found him about four feet up the living room wall, having climbed the wooden shutters. As a baby in his stroller, he held a long stick seemingly forever, mesmerized by a caterpillar’s movements. He eschewed toys for sticks and, when he was older, scrambled high up vertical rocks without gear every time he went camping.
From toddlerhood until he died, Burton watched PBS nature shows. He began studying bonsai trees as a preteen and, at age 14, lectured to the Austin Bonsai Society. Trees became his canvas: He sculpted, treated and cared for them, getting a degree in horticulture from Texas A&M University.
Burton taught me everything I know about rocks, animals and plants. At his memorial service, a half-dozen of his childhood friends stood up to declare that he opened up the world of nature to them, too. He was extraordinary.
Burton Charles Knight was an arborist who wrote poems and music. He died April 24 in Dallas. — By his mother, Toni Inglis
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The Post is publishing reader-submitted obituaries as part of a weekly feature, What We Remember.
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