Hall of Fame
Ed Harris was born and raised in Abingdon,Virginia. In 1953, he and his parents, the late Walter J. Harris and Helen Henderson Harris,moved to Black Mountain North Carolina. Ed attended Owen High School where he excelled on the football field as an offensive guard and defensive tackle. Upon graduation, he enrolled at Western Carolina University where he met and married his lovely wife Regina.
In 1963 Ed went back to school enrolling at Asheville-Biltmore College. He graduated in 1966 with a BA in Political Science with honors. That year he served as President of the Student Body and was selected for Who’s Who. While at Asheville-Biltmore, Ed developed his skills as a tennis player and has been in love with the sport ever since.
After graduation, Ed went to work for DuPont in industrial supervision. In 1967 he returned to Asheville-Biltmore (now the University of North Carolina-Asheville) as an administrator.
From 1967-81 Ed served in several administrative positions including Director of Financial Aids,Assistant to the President, and Assistant Dean of Students. In 1972 he received his master’s degree in Higher Education Administration from Western Carolina and was named Associate Director of the Counseling Center. While at UNC-Ashville he also served as the men’s tennis coach from the mid-70’s until 1982. In 1981, UNC-Asheville President William E. Highsmith appointed Mr. Harris as the new Director of Athletics. UNC-Ashville honored Ed with the naming of “Ed B. Harris Day” when he left for Missouri Western.
Ed took over the reigns of the Missouri Western Department of Athletics on March 1, 1985. He spearheaded Western’s move into the National Collegiate Athletics Association (NCAA) in 1989, organized a drive that helped triple the size of the Gold Coat Club, and was instrumental in raising funds for the Spratt Stadium lighting project. While at Western, Ed served terms as the Secretary for the Mid-America Intercollegiate Athletics Association (MIAA) and a member of the NCAA South Central Region basketball committee, an endeavor that saw Western host both men’s and women’s regional championships during March of 1994. In 1995 MWSC honored Ed with the naming of an endowed scholarship in his name,The Ed Harris Leadership Scholarship, then preceded to award the first scholarship to his son Brad Harris.
Harris retired as WT’s athletics director in 2006 and served briefly as the interim athletic director at Midwestern State in 2007. Ed and his wife Regina, the highlight of his life, have three sons. Mitchell David, who was tragically killed in a car accident in 1974, Bradley Patrick, who is now a PHD candidate in Chemical Engineering at Clemson University, and Kent Steven, who currently attends West Texas A&M.
