Henry Harrison (Harry) Strauss was born and raised in Orrville, Ohio, where his family had moved from Bucks County, Pennsylvania. His parents, Henry Harrison and Mary Elizabeth (Leininger) Strauss, were of "Pennsylvania Dutch" background. The elder Henry was a banker and the family was locally prominent; they not only owned the First National Bank of Orrville, but also a number of farms in the area and a good share of the local mattress factory, The Orrville Bedding Company.

Harry was the second of the Strauss's four children. His older brother Frank followed in the paternal footsteps as a banker but with different and tragic results: he managed - and managed to lose - the family bank; then, after suffering financial, legal and emotional problems, including a stint in jail, took his own life early in the Depression. Harry's younger sister Beside, troubled by serious arthritis, worked in the family bank for a time, lived in a nursing home in Woozier, Ohio and eventually moved in with her brother Robert Todd "Tom" Strauss, the youngest of the four siblings. Tom was a dentist who, with his wife Lou, raised two children who knew the Classics professor as "Uncle Harry", Mary Strauss Wetzel (now of Helena, Arkansas) and Robert Todd "Bob" Strauss (now of Hartville, Ohio).

Harry got his A.B. in Classical Languages at the College of Wooster (Ohio) in 1904. He then began graduate study at the University of Chicago, spending the 1904-05 academic year there before moving to New Orleans where he obtained his A.M. in Classics in 1909 from Tulane University. He studied further at the University of Chicago in the summers of 1906, 1907, 1908, 1910 and 1912. While working on his A.M., Strauss held a number of teaching posts: Acting Assistant Professor of Latin at Miami University of Ohio (1905-06, summer, 1909}, Acting Professor of Latin and Greek at Upper Iowa University in Fayette (1907-08) and Teaching Fellow at Tulane (1908-09). He was hired as Instructor of Latin at Tulane (1909-11) before moving to the University of Kentucky, where he was Acting Professor of Greek (1912-13).

Amidst all this moving, Harry Strauss had completed his education and established his teaching style, but, at age 31, he was ready to settle down and in the fall of 1913, he began teaching at the University of Arkansas as Acting Professor of Ancient Languages. The following year he was named Professor and made Head of the Ancient Languages Department, succeeding John Clinton Futrall, who had ascended to the presidency in 1913. Thus, Fayetteville became Henry Harrison Strauss's home and the University his life for the next forty-five years.

Strauss taught a full range of traditional Classics courses in Greek and Latin and created a few courses of his own. In keeping with the custom of the day (Professors often taught 15-18 hours per semester), he was listed in the 1914-15 catalogue as instructor of eleven courses: Cicero/Ovid/Terence, Latin Prose Composition, Roman Public and Private Life, Horace and Tacitus, Roman Poetry, Horace and Virgil, Homer and Plato, Greek Historians, Advanced Greek Prose Composition, Attic Drama and New Testament Greek. He was a popular and demanding teacher, expecting very high performances from his language students, while presenting entertaining lectures in courses on ancient civilization. He developed courses on Greek and Roman Mythology, Greek and Roman Civilization and Greek and Latin Word Roots. The latter course offered two hours toward the foreign language requirement and was therefore popular, especially among athletes. Fond of his students, Strauss took pride in addressing each of them by name.

Italy was another of Harry Strauss's loves. He had a sabbatical year there in 1922-23 and returned for many summers. His travel companions were fellow U. of A. Professors of Language, Antonio Marinoni and Luigi A. Passarelli. Strauss's family remember the gifts he would send or bring from these expeditions including a series of cameos and a tree eventually planted in his brother Tom's front yard in Ohio.

Professor Strauss owned a small brick house at 312 East Lafayette Avenue in Fayetteville but rented it out, preferring to live in the Gregg House closer to campus. The rental income was welcome and, as he did not drive, Gregg Street was more convenient: just two blocks from his office on the third floor of Old Main.

Strauss had a reputation as a "straight arrow," which seems justified to some extent. He was the Vice President of the first University of Arkansas chapter of Phi Beta Kappa (1932; fellow classicist J.C. Futrall was president) and was well-remembered for upholding the strictest standards of excellence for the chapter's initiates. Six years before the U. of A. chapter was organized, Strauss's alma mater at Wooster had made him an Alumni Member of its chapter.

On the University Disciplinary Committee, he often railed against student indiscretions. When, before Homecoming 1935, some athletes - including the governor's son - were allegedly involved in the rape of a woman from a prominent sorority, Strauss was in the forefront: he called for swift and uncompromising punishment, even in the face of threats of reprisal from the governor. He was described by one faculty member as being "a pillar of Victorian propriety." Just before retiring, he advised a newly-arrived young male faculty member in Old Main always to keep his door open when interviewing young women in his office. It was said that he once gave a failing grade to the only student enrolled in his Greek class.

His strict insistence on high standards carried over to his family. His niece and nephew remember his summer visits to Ohio, when he tutored them in Latin, always exhorting them to apply themselves. His older brother Frank's incarceration, alcoholism and suicide must have been a source of great pain to this conservative, upright and gentle scholar.

When President Futrall called upon Walter J. Lemke to make a photographic record of each Dean and Department head, Strauss would not cooperate. Lemke relates that in desperation he gave a camera to one of Strauss's students, who smuggled it into the classroom and took the photo of Professor Strauss without his knowledge. "We got a picture, but not one that we could use in our publicity."

Personally, Strauss is remembered as engaging, sociable and friendly. He was not the stereotypical prude; rather, he enjoyed social drinking with his friends, good conversation and going to the movies. If there is truth to tradition, he was a partner - with other professors - in the production of several batches of bathtub gin during Prohibition. His preferred drink was scotch, but he was also an expert at drinking bourbon. He was devoted to family, and once cancelled his Friday classes so that he - and his students - could attend his niece Mary's wedding at the Presbyterian Church on College Avenue.

Strikingly handsome as a young man, Professor Strauss, in his later years, is recalled as a small bald man with glasses and a precise manner of speaking. He also had a most memorable laugh, which he indulged in often, especially in response to limericks and off-color jokes. At a retirement party given for him and Dean Stoker in 1948, Strauss made an eloquent and charming speech to the large and attentive crowd that filled the University Ballroom. The sixty-six year old Professor finished his remarks in Ancient Greek, delivered with much feeling. The crowd applauded politely, unaware that they had just heard a risque joke in the language of Socrates and Homer.

Like his sister, Strauss never married. His family and friends were his intimates. At the University, his close friends included Dorsey Jones and David Y. Thomas of the History Department, Professors Marinoni and Passarelli, Walter Lemke, Sam Dellinger and J. S. Waterman. When they gathered at George's Majestic Lounge on Dickson Street, they sat at "Special Faculty Table #1." Pastor Butler of the Presbyterian Church and bookstore manager Charlie Stone were also among his close friends.

Strauss died on 4 December 1958, the day after his 76th birthday. Pallbearers at his funeral consisted of his surviving Fayetteville "family": Lemke, Jones, Stone, Paul Marinoni, Ed Meriwether, Robert Leflar, Col. George Caldwell, A. E. Lussky, T. C. Carlson, L. L. McKeehan and George Pappas, the owner of the beloved Majestic Lounge. His ashes are buried in Orrville.

Henry Harrison Strauss was intimately involved with his career; it was his life. Although he did not publish, excellence in his profession meant everything to him. He was proud of the strong tradition of the liberal arts colleges in his native Ohio and tried to replicate their good points in his adopted state. From 1924 to 1926, he was the Vice President for Arkansas of the Classical Association of the Middle West and South. However, his contribution to education consisted largely in his dedication to teaching and excellence in the classroom. These are the foundations of his lasting fame. Eight years after his retirement and two years before his death, this dedication was formally recognized by the University of Arkansas, when, at the commencement of 2 June 1956, Henry Harrison Strauss was granted a Doctor of Laws degree honors causa, in recognition of his tireless pursuit of the highest academic and moral standards.

--Daniel B. Levine, Some Illustrious Educators of Old Main

Acknowledgments

The author gratefully acknowledges the generous assistance of U. of A. Emeritus Professors O. Orland Maxfield, Robert E. Reeser and E. Leighton Rudolph and the staff of the Special Collections Department of Mullins Library. Mary Strauss Wetzel and Robert Todd Strauss, Jr. kindly provided much useful information about their uncle. The rare photograph of H. H. Strauss is from The Razorback, 1924, vol. 27, 39.