Active Millionaire Couple Give Service High Priority

Harriet and Bill Harris jog the two miles around Balboa Island twice almost every night. As the Harrises lope through the evening’s cool sea breezes, they observe strollers, boats gliding along Newport Bay, houses in their neighborhood being remodeled and window displays in shops.

“We catch up with each other,” says Bill, referring to the non-stop conversations the two self-made millionaires have while jogging. “During the day Harriet and I will talk to each other for maybe two minutes--if at all. So our evening jogs give us a chance to find out how this or that (business) meeting went--though we try to leave business at the office.”

This community-oriented couple say they are never at a loss for something to talk about during these evening jogs. Harriet usually tells her 51-year-old husband how things went during the day at Ridgewood Development Inc., a Costa Mesa home-building company she helped found nine years ago.

Harriet, 45, is currently the company’s chairman of the board. In recent months, however, she’s talked more about her volunteer work as executive vice president of the Program for Women Foundation. She is leading the foundation’s campaign to raise $1 million to build a hotel for homeless women on the grounds of the YWCA in Santa Ana.

The talk on the jogging trail often turns to sports and fitness as well. Bill, an owner of of the United States Football League’s Arizona Outlaws, is a member of President Reagan’s National Council on Physical Fitness and Sports. He is spearheading the effort to build a $50-million U.S. Fitness Academy in Orange County. To complement her husband’s efforts in the fitness field, Harriet is organizing a statewide convention on women and physical fitness to be held next year.

Business Talk

When they exhaust these topics, the Harrises say, they frequently turn to talking about how things are going at Bill’s numerous development, contracting and manufacturing companies. Chief among them is Rampart General Inc. of Costa Mesa, which he founded 19 years ago and of which he is now president and chairman of the board.

The Harrises are longtime friends of Orange County Board of Supervisors Chairman Thomas F. Riley and his wife, Emma Jane. A year ago Harriet was tapped by Riley to assist his wife in leading the campaign to raise $1 million in private contributions to build the Hotel for Homeless Women.

“As a home builder and a woman, I believe strongly that every woman should have a safe, dry place to sleep,” Harriet said.

As executive vice president of the Program for Women Foundation, which is building the hotel, Harriet coordinates the day-to-day fund-raising activities of the foundation, especially in the business community.

The hotel will be built over the YWCA’s gym by raising the facility’s roof, Harriet explained during an interview in the Harrises’ rambling Cape Cod-style house on Balboa Island.

When the Hotel for Homeless Women opens its doors in the fall of 1986, the facility will accommodate two women in each of its 20 rooms; it will provide temporary shelter to nearly 500 women annually. Guests will be charged a yet-to-be-determined nominal fee based on their ability to pay, Harriet said.

Help for Homeless

“The hotel will serve those women who find themselves with no place to live except the streets because they’ve suffered a terrible trauma, have undergone a divorce, or have lost their husbands; they are no longer able to cope with meeting their everyday needs.

“The hotel will give these women a place to stay for 30 to 90 days. During this time, they will receive personal counseling, job evaluations and learn how to network with other women. Our goal is to make these homeless women aware of the options available to them and provide them with the motivation to exercise these options.”

Harriet Harris has spent much of the summer arranging meetings of so-called “blue ribbon” committees representing various segments of the private sector.

“Architects, interior and landscape designers, subcontractors and builders have met and gone over the plans for the hotel. It looks like they will be able to make a lot of ‘in-kind’ donations; constructing the hotel is a cause that’s tailor-made for the building industry.”

So far $250,000 has been raised to build the hotel, and she expects the remaining $750,000 to be raised by the end of the year. (Those interested in making donations or contributing their services to the Program for Women Foundation may call (714) 250-5956 or (714) 250-5957 .)

Harriet sees her volunteer work on the hotel as a natural outgrowth of her business career, which she began in 1961 as an administrative assistant for John D. Lusk & Son, a major Southern California developer. Harriet, who was in charge of purchasing for the firm’s commercial and residential projects by the time she left Lusk after nearly 11 years, attributes much of her knowledge of the building industry to her mentor, John Lusk.

“Although I had to pay my dues and prove myself, John was more than willing to offer assistance and encouragement to take on the next task,” she said. “The building industry is predominately male-oriented, but I’ve rarely felt that being a woman has been a disadvantage. In fact, in many cases my gender has worked in my favor.

“I know it doesn’t sound very feminine to be involved in purchasing, but it was a natural evolution for me. Instead of shopping for shoes, groceries or furniture, I was shopping for lumber, kitchen cabinets, carpeting and plumbing.”

Joined Grant in ’71

In 1971, she joined the Grant Co. of California as vice president of the home builder’s Southern California division. However, after she had been with Grant for five years, the company phased out its building operations.

Harriet and two partners formed Ridgewood Development in 1976. Today, she is chairman of the board, partner Fred (G.F.) Armstrong is president and partner and husband Bill is secretary-treasurer.

Even though Ridgewood, like other home builders, has been buffeted by the nation’s worst post-World War II housing recession, it has hung on, with $18 million in sales in 1980, its best year to date, Harriet said.

The risks and high stakes are what make the building industry so exciting--along with the opportunity to make money, her husband acknowledges. Indeed, it was the construction industry’s potential for financial rewards that persuaded Bill to turn down a U.S. Atomic Energy Commission fellowship to graduate school after he received a degree in chemistry from Whittier College in 1955--and prompted his twin brother Ben to give up his plans to go to law school. (Today, Bill is a member of the board of trustees of both Whittier College and the University of La Verne.)

“My dad was in the fence business in Long Beach,” Bill Harris recalled. “When my brother and I got out of college my dad said: ‘Hey, you guys can make a lot more money in building. Why don’t you come into the business?’ ”

So in 1955, Bill and Ben joined the family business, Harris Fence Co., and a couple of years later the twins formed their own company to make concrete blocks. By 1960 they were building apartment complexes.

In retrospect, the Harris twins’ fortunes were assured when they formed a company, Rampart, in 1966 to build pre-cast fireplaces. These pre-built fireplaces proved very popular with home builders, Bill said, because they were much cheaper than installing fireplaces in the traditional way: brick by brick by hand.

Fireplaces Played Cupid

The fireplaces not only made Bill a multimillionaire, they also served as the vehicle through which he was introduced to Harriet. They first met in 1968 while Bill was selling pre-cast fireplaces to John Lusk & Son, the firm for which Harriet then was in charge of purchasing.

They conducted some business, mostly by phone, then lost contact with each other until 1973, when Harriet was handling purchasing for the Grant Co. Again, they found themselves doing business together.

“I was a carefree bachelor in those days (since his 13-year-marriage had ended in divorce in 1967), and I was determined never to get married again,” Bill said.

It wasn’t until they formed Ridgewood in 1976, a year after Harriet’s second marriage ended in divorce, that they began having business lunches.

“The next thing I knew we were dating, and I got a chance to find out how fantastic Harriet was,” Bill said. Their courtship led to their marriage in 1980 in New York City, which, Bill said, is “one of our favorite cities.” The wedding was attended by 40 family members from California and 20 close friends from New York.

By 1980 they had been successful business partners in Ridgewood Development for four years, but they both realized that they were taking a risk by marrying. Despite their reservations, their marital partnership has turned out as well as their business partnership.

“We’ve learned what (business) areas in which we can blend our talents--and those areas where we should do things separately,” Harriet said.

Football Interests

One of Bill’s special projects is football. Although he says it isn’t a “business investment,” he has been an owner of various United States Football League teams, including the Denver Gold and the Chicago Blitz-turned-Arizona Wranglers. He said he invested in these teams through the influence of George Allen, for whom he played tight end for four years at Whittier College. They have been friends for 30 years.

“He was a real taskmaster,” said Bill, recalling the days he played for Allen, who subsequently went on to become head coach of the Los Angeles Rams, Washington Redskins and Arizona Wranglers. “But I came to adopt his philosophy as my own: Play to win.”

While he’s still part-owner of the USFL’s Arizona Outlaws (which merged with the Arizona Wranglers last December), Bill is selling his half-interest in the team. He says his enthusiasm for owning a pro football team took a dive when Allen retired from coaching last year.

Because of Allen, Bill five years ago got involved in President Reagan’s Council on Physical Fitness and Sports. When Allen became the council’s chairman in 1981, he asked Bill to come on board as a special adviser.

“We wanted to build a fitness academy in the U.S. like the sports academies they have in Europe, China and Japan,” Bill said.

To accomplish this goal the National Fitness Foundation was formed, with Bill serving as chairman of the site selection committee. His group spent a year examining more than 360 prospective locations. Last February, the Fitness Foundation chose a 175-acre Aliso Viejo site, located between Laguna Beach and the hills of Laguna Niguel.

The national campaign to raise the $50 million needed to build the U.S. Fitness Academy will be kicked off this winter with a gala dinner in Orange County, said Bill, the Fitness Foundation’s secretary-treasurer. He said he expects the money to be raised in just 18 months. The Fitness Academy, when completed, will serve as a national training headquarters and research center for coaches and athletes from the high school through the Olympic levels.

Wife Is Interested

Bill noted that Harriet, who accompanied him on the national search for academy sites, has become increasingly interested in the field of fitness and nutrition. She now represents California in National Women’s Leadership on Fitness, an organization that operates under the auspices of the President’s Council on Physical Fitness and Sports.

Harriet’s interest in fitness has culminated in her organizing a statewide conference on women and physical fitness to be held next spring. Gov. and Mrs. George Deukmejian are among those expected to attend.

“As women grow and take over more and more top-level positions in the business arena, they become more susceptible to the stress-related diseases men have been dealing with for years,” Harriet said. “By focusing on solving these problems in a very positive way, I hope we can help men and women become more aware of how to prevent these conditions.”

The list of activities in which the Harrises are involved goes on and on. Long active as a philanthropist for the City of Hope in Duarte, Bill in 1979 dedicated the hospital’s nuclear medical wing; Harriet serves on the City of Hope’s board of trustees. Bill also is a founder of the Center Club of the Orange County Performing Arts Center and is a member of the Performing Arts Center’s Gridiron Club.

But Bill is quick to add, “The family comes first. If some community or business function conflicts with a family function or crisis, the family wins out every time. I’ve got to admit that when I was in my late 20s my focus was different. But when I turned 40, I just decided there was more to life than putting in 12-hour days, seven days a week at the office.”

Interjected a smiling Harriet, “We still put in a lot of time at the office.”

“Yeah, we work hard and play hard,” Bill acknowledged.

Harriet continued: “I think we can keep up this pace because we enjoy the business we’re in. And because we do everything together, we can both stay at the office till 10 p.m. without the other cooling his or her heels at home.”

Both Can Work

Echoing this view, Bill said, “The beauty of our relationship is that I have a wife who works with me. When I’m working late, she’s down the hall working late, too. I don’t have to worry about getting calls from home asking when am I going to show up for dinner because the chicken’s getting cold or the steak’s burning.”

Despite their hectic schedules, the couple attempt to set aside weekends for visits from their four grandchildren, who range in age from seven months to five years. They have seven children, ages 20 to 29, by their former marriages, and most of their recreational activities--snow skiing, scuba diving and water sports--are done with the family.

“When we go skiing, we’ve got to make dinner reservations for 25,” chuckled Bill, describing their entourage of children, spouses of children and grandchildren. Bill and Harriet are now making final preparations for a 10-day horseback trip later this month through the Grand Tetons of Wyoming with 28 family members and friends.

Most of their children are involved in one or another of the Harris family businesses. As a result, Harriet says: “At family gatherings there are usually at least 20 of us, and whenever I see 10 of them starting to congregate, I wade in and break it up; since they’re in business together, they’ll start ‘talking shop.’ Family gatherings aren’t for business; they’re to have fun.”

One of Harriet’s sons shares what is Bill’s great passion: sport fishing. Bill’s 44-foot deep sea fishing boat Pacific is docked in San Diego, where Bill goes fishing once a week during the albacore season.

However, Bill seems to get almost as much enjoyment from his ski boat. While Bill is a proficient water skier, Harriet impishly said, “I can ski better than he can.”