Maurice Rowlen HARRISON, Jr.

HARRISON, MCDONALD

Posted By: Sarah Thorson Little (email)
Date: 2/6/2016 at 23:59:40

August 1, 1918 ----- August 12, 2007

ENGINEER BEHIND BAL HARBOUR MALL

Maurice Rowlen "Moe" Harrison Jr., the engineer whose family construction company built Bal Harbour Shops, the Sears Tower, Brickell Avenue highrises and a Ripley's-worthy chicken coop, died Sunday at 89. Harrison fell two weeks ago while going to a movie in Delray Beach, where he lived with his wife, Mae MacDonald Harrison. He sustained a fatal head injury, said son Peter Harrison.

Moe Jr.'s father, Moe Sr., came to Miami from Des Moines, Iowa, in 1925, when a friend who'd made the move told him: "This is a golden opportunity for you in the construction business," said his son, a Miami commercial real estate broker.

Moe Jr., a member of the Cushman School's first graduating class, joined the family business after graduating from Iowa State University in 1940, starting at the bottom, his wife said. In 1942, he married fellow Iowan Mae McDonald, a nurse, at his parents' Miami Shores home. They moved to Sebring, where Harrison was superintendent of a defense project. His wife said he repeatedly sought to enlist in the wartime Army, which rejected him because of bad vision.

"We built boats and 500 [prefabricated] homes for the English," she said. "They had to be shipped in boxes and put up in England." A plant in Hialeah turned out "assault boats" that were strung together as bridges, and were used on Normandy Beach during D-Day. It wasn't the first time that M.R. Harrison Construction got sidetracked from its primary mission. When the Great Depression hit, projects ground to a halt. But the company found an alternate use for the framed-out Fritz Hotel on Northwest 27th Avenue.

"The Million-Dollar Hen House!" Ripley's Believe It Or Not crowed in a June 23, 1933, cartoon, noting that the structure held 60,000 laying hens whose eggs the family sold.

Moe Jr. became company president in 1955. Five years later, the company completed the University of Miami's engineering school. At that time, "they were the first or second largest contractors in Dade County," said Stanley Whitman, Bal Harbour Shops owner and the Harrisons' neighbor in Miami Shores. "I knew that Moe's father had been very reputable. That's why he got the job to build" the shops in 1963. The company dissolved in the early 1990s. M.R. Harrison Crane Service still exists.

Active in many civic groups -- most notably Rotary International for 55 years -- Harrison was on the board of the Automobile Association of America until his death. He was chairman of the board in 1977 and 1978. "He liked service and being on boards," said son Maurice "Moe" III, of Frisco, Texas. "He had a presence about him. People were always asking him to be involved."

He also was a competitive sailor who co-founded the Emerald Bay Yacht Club on Biscayne Bay and an accomplished orchid grower who included a 20-by-20-foot orchid house on the grounds of the Bay Point home he built after leaving Miami Shores.

In addition to his wife and sons Peter and Moe, he is survived by son Mike, seven grandchildren and six great-grandchildren.

Services are at 2 p.m. today at Abbey Delray South, 1717 Homewood Blvd., Delray Beach.

Miami Herald - Miami, Florida
August 14, 2007