Building Character in the Valley
by ROD BELCHER

Stuart Harris’ enthusiasm is contagious. When the retired mass merchandising executive talks about character education in the Roanoke Valley, it’s hard to not want to join him in his crusade.

“I’m very practical. I come from a business background, and I believe in measured outcomes,” Harris said. “If you do this, then this is the outcome. I don’t like to think of character education as teaching character. It’s preparing children for life.”

Harris hails from London, England, but has made the Roanoke Valley his home for the past 30 years.
Harris spent 20 years with The Great Universal Stores Ltd., a retail conglomerate headquartered in Britain. Harris joined the firm as an internal auditor after becoming a Chartered Accountant, the UK’s equivalent of a CPA. He rose to the position of CEO for Great Universal’s 10,000-employee, multi-billion dollar catalog company, The British Mail Order Corp.

“My ‘climb’ within the company,” Harris says, “was mostly in marketing and operational roles. Ultimately, it was about planning and people.”

Harris is a true believer in the power of putting the right person, with a passion and a vision, in the right place. In the past two years he has founded the Greater Roanoke Valley Character Coalition (GRVCC), an organization that looks to enhance and strengthen the moral levels, core values and quality of life for students and the community of the Roanoke Valley at large. GRVCC is a completely volunteer organization, and Harris has used his considerable charm and tenacity to attract many of the most prominent businesses in the valley to his banner, including Norfolk and Southern, Kroger, and Advance Auto, as well as numerous prominent citizens.

“The response from our volunteers is very good,” he says. “The challenge is to harness the energy of our volunteers. I try to find people interested in various committees we have established.”

GRVCC is not Harris’ first foray into community service. He operated Variety Clubs International, a charity organization that helped underprivileged children, for 10 years while living in Manchester, England.

Besides his work with GRVCC, he is also on the board of the Parenting Project, a non-profit organization dedicated to addressing crises of child abuse, neglect and abandonment, teen pregnancy and overall violence by teaching parenting, empathy and nurturing skills education to school children. The project, which is headquartered in Boca Raton, Fla., was created by Suzy Garfinkle Chevrier, a parent advocate; Dr. Myriam Miedzian, author of “Boys Will Be Boys; Breaking the Link Between Masculinity and Violence,” and Gary Ferdman, longtime non-profit organizer and fundraiser.
Harris also has been active with Variety Club International, which fosters programs for special needs children.

“My involvement with Variety Club International is probably what led me to my work with Valley Character and the Parenting Project,” Harris says.

Another factor in bringing about his desire to make a difference was his late wife, Paula, who had a doctorate in family and child development from Virginia Tech. Harris took care of his wife during her battle with cancer and said that afterwards he reevaluated his own priorities as to what really mattered in life.

“You are only successful if you measure everything in balance,” he says. “It became clear to me that I feel best if I’m doing something for someone else. So for the last three years since Paula’s death, I’ve been completely committed to seeing what sort of contribution I could make.”

Three years ago, the Virginia General Assembly passed legislation requiring that character be taught in public schools.

Harris says that GRVCC’s main goal is to coordinate between the schools, which have implemented character-based curriculum, and the community and the most important component of the character equation: the parents. Harris says that for the lessons in character, there must be a support for character development at every level in the community and in the home.

“The parent is the teacher ultimately,” he says. “It’s one of the more interesting challenges. How do you harness the energy of a community?”

With Harris at the helm, GRVCC is taking a multifaceted approach to reaching out. The organization’s numerous committees have developed programs to instruct ethics in the workplace, develop roundtable discussions for parent groups, reaching into communities through local civic groups and leaders, develop a web site to coordinate character-related organizations in the valley and have been instrumental in the development and implementation of the first Youth Court in Virginia at recently troubled Patrick Henry High School.

“The initial idea for the youth court began last year,” says Patrick Henry principal, and long-time Harris acquaintance, Peter Wonson. “It was the product of cooperation and discussions between many different organizations, including Stuart’s GRVCC.”

“We are very proud of the fact,” Harris says. “Judge Diane Strickland is chair for the taskforce committee that put it all together with marvelous cooperation from Roanoke City and the Patrick Henry administration.”

“The students involved in the youth court have done a beautiful job,” Wonson adds. “While it is a new program and we are learning as we go, I think that, so far, it has been going very well and has been well-received by the students.”

Twenty-three local lawyers volunteered their time to help establish the court that deals with any issues of misconduct at the high school and is being looked at as a model by other schools, he said.
Harris, father of three grown children by his first marriage, says parenting is an enormous responsibility that many younger parents today seem ill equipped to face alone.

“The child is completely dependent on you for everything,” he says. “The parent’s goal is to help nurture and develop an independent person capable of dealing with life’s difficult choices. It’s ultimately about teaching responsibility.”

When he looks back on his life, Stuart Harris says it has been a pretty interesting and diverse “ride.”
“It all seems like another life these days” he says. “As trite as it sounds, children are the future. I want to devote my energies to developing their potential and in turn making all of our communities better.”