H.C. "Joe" Harned's Obituary
TCC friend and donor H. C. “Joe” Harned passed away Tuesday at Good Samaritan Hospital in Puyallup at the age of 102. At this time, no plans for a memorial service have been announced.
Born in 1917 in Ursina, Pennsylvania, a town with less than 250 people, Joe grew up during the Great Depression. He never forgot what it felt like to live in poverty, and after a long, successful career as a real estate developer, that memory would inform his philanthropy.
World War II broke out when Joe was 21 years old. He joined the Navy and found himself aboard an aircraft carrier, the USS Long Island CVE No. 1, headed for the Panama Canal and the Pacific. Joe said that the carrier lost all but four of its planes in the Battle of Midway, but the carrier itself survived the war. In April of 1945 it dropped off Joe and a few of his shipmates at the Port of Tacoma, and Joe decided to make Tacoma his home.
Tacoma was in growth mode after the war, and Joe didn’t waste any time recognizing and seizing every opportunity that came up. His job as a meat cutter at Madigan Army Hospital allowed him to make his first real estate purchase – a $2,000 duplex. Then he bought a service station on 6th Avenue to help pay his way through the University of Puget Sound, where he went to school part time while working full time. He graduated in 1951 with a degree in business and launched a brilliant career in real estate development. Along the way he married Vida Merle Young, and they had two sons, Lynn and Keith Harned.
“Joe understood the struggles our students faced because he lived many of those struggles,” said TCC President Ivan L. Harrell, II, PhD. “Education helped him turn his life into a real Tacoma success story, and he wanted our students to have that same opportunity.”
Joe remembered the famous billboards saying “Will the last person leaving Seattle please turn out the lights.” But he believed in Tacoma, buying depressed properties and improving them. He was the pioneer developer of the area around Meridian Avenue on South Hill in Puyallup and was the developer of Lincoln Plaza on 38th Street in south Tacoma.
When he found himself in a position to give back, Joe started funding education. Three buildings on local college campuses bear his name, including the H.C. Joe Harned Center for Health Careers at Tacoma Community College. He also helped fund the educational journeys of countless students, endowing scholarships at TCC and in his home town of Ursina, Pennsylvania.
“Joe always wanted to know how our students at TCC we’re doing,” said Bill Ryberg, Vice President for College Advancement and TCC Foundation Executive Director. “He assisted dozens of students by establishing scholarships and providing generous support to the college. Joe was also a dear friend, and his memory is a blessing for all of us.”
Joe never missed the opportunity to make a good investment, and he believed education was one of the best investments in the future of society that he could make.
“Contributing to education is all about potential,” Joe said in a 2010 interview for TCC Magazine. “I like to tell myself when I invest in education, I’m investing in the potential of our city and nation, maybe even the world.”
Many members of the TCC community got to know Joe over the last decade. He enjoyed visiting campus, interacting with students, and chatting with scholarship recipients about their plans. He was there for the opening of the Harned Center, partially funded with the largest donation in TCC history, and his hundredth birthday was held on campus.
“Joe loved our students and he loved our faculty and staff,” said TCC President Emeritus Pamela Transue. “Every summer he would show up with baskets of delicious tomatoes he had personally grown and pass them around. His generous funding of healthcare equipment for training and scholarships for struggling students has been transformative for TCC and for our community.”
Joe Harned was fond of saying that "education was the friend for a lifetime." We at TCC are blessed to have called Joe our friend, and many students at TCC and elsewhere will carry his gift with them into a lifetime of expanded opportunity. His legacy, in Tacoma and at TCC, will continue to touch many lives for many lifetimes to come.
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