Ramsay L. Harris, 105; Teacher, Songwriter and Inventor Was a Fixture at Private Webb School

Ramsay L. Harris, a curious and enthusiastic teacher, impromptu songwriter and whimsical inventor who endeared himself to generations of students at the private Webb School in Claremont, has died at the age of 105.

Harris died Jan. 11 at La Casa Real in Santa Fe, N.M., of natural causes of aging. He had moved to New Mexico in 1995 to be near his daughter.

He taught history, literature, Latin and occasionally comparative religion during his long tenure at Webb from 1945 until his retirement in 1987. Previously he taught at Redlands Junior High School and Pomona College, was headmaster of Norton School in Claremont and tutored in Beverly Hills.

But beyond the classroom, Harris inspired students to learn by his own indefatigable example. His infectious fun-loving chortle alone -- a laugh students loved to imitate -- could draw youngsters into an always-educational chat in the school cafeteria or Harris’ on-campus home. He often taught by giving them puzzles to solve.

Fascinated with geology and paleontology, Harris signed up for fossil hunts and lured students along, forming the Peccary Society, named for the pig-like animal. They collected fossils for Webb School’s own museum, named for its founder and Harris’ neighbor, Raymond Alf.

Harris, a musician who played piano and the musical saw, even composed lyrics for a Peccary Society song. To the tune of “A Bird in a Gilded Cage,” his fossil-hunters would march forth singing:

We’re peccary men out looking for bones

In the wilds of this wild country;

We’ll find them and then we’ll return again

To the little museum on the hill;

We’ll crate the fossilized dinosaur,

We’ll ship him collect, and then

We’ll stand on the brink of the missing link;

We’re the Webb School peccary men.

Harris also composed the words and music for the Webb School’s song, “Honor the Blue and Gold.”

Seemingly, every institution Harris touched benefited from his extracurricular songwriting. As an undergraduate at Colgate College in upstate New York, he wrote what became the school’s fight song, “The Old Maroon,” and while earning his master’s at UC Berkeley, he wrote another, “March On, California.”

In the 1930s, as an English teacher at Pomona College, Harris contributed verses to “Torchbearers” and wrote words and music for such songs as “Over the Years.” During World War II, when he taught meteorology and aeronautics to pilots in the Army Air Forces, he wrote “Wings of Freedom” for male choruses and military bands.

Harris patented several inventions, although he made no money from the devices. Among them were a spring lock to child-proof drawers, a cardboard device to hold a book in position for reading, a weaver’s loom with a gravity-powered shuttle and an ant-proof hummingbird feeder. Perhaps most intriguing was his “broomerrang”: a broom with wheels that lifted it up on the back pull, akin to a typewriter carriage returning for another line of typing.

Harris was born in India, where his great-grandfather and grandfather had been surgeons in the British army and his father was a teacher. Conscripted at age 16, he served in Britain’s Indian Defense Forces in World War I.

He studied for two years at Rangoon College and at age 20 moved to the United States to complete his education.

Harris’ wife of 55 years, Mary, died in 1998. He is survived by his daughter, Laura Ware; his son, Andy; two grandchildren and four great-grandchildren.