SEAL Was a 'Renaissance Man'

A former art and architecture student who joined the Navy SEALs was killed in combat operations in Afghanistan over the weekend, military officials said yesterday.

Joshua T. Harris, a Lexington, N.C., resident based in Virginia, died Saturday while attempting to cross a turbulent river in Afghanistan. Harris, a petty officer 1st class, was temporarily forward deployed from his assignment at Naval Special Warfare Development Group, Dam Neck, Va.

His family said Harris, 36, loved Picasso and Pollock, and he loved to paint. The walls of his family's home are filled with his work, which was usually abstract, they said.

"He was a true Renaissance man," his mother, Evelyn Harris, said by telephone yesterday. "Josh always wanted to be the best and the brightest, especially in things that helped people. He believed he was fighting for our freedom and fighting terrorism, with all his heart."

Harris was born in Chapel Hill, N.C., and grew up on his family's dairy farm outside Lexington. His father was a physician. His mother ran the Lexington Youth Theatre. His twin sister, Mary-Maria Kirstin Harris, who is known as Kiki, said she, Josh and their older brother, S. Ranchor Harris III, invented their own entertainments when they were not helping on the farm. The three spent much of their time outdoors in the woods or riding three-wheelers, she said.

"He was always very athletic," his sister said.

Despite his modest size, Harris was a standout linebacker at Lexington Senior High, earning all-county and all-conference honors, his mother said. He was frustrated that he could never put more than 170 pounds on his 5-foot-11 frame, but his gung-ho spirit more than made up for his size, his mother said.

"At the end of his senior year, no one would try to run on his side," his father, Sam Harris, said. "It was foolish to try."

But Josh Harris also was just as likely to read Albert Camus or talk about art as athletics. Harris enrolled in Davidson College in Davidson, N.C., as a studio art major. He studied art in Prague as part of a college exchange, and later returned to the eastern European city on his own to study further before enlisting in the military, his mother said. He also pursued a graduate degree in architecture at the University of North Carolina.

"I loved that sensitive side to come out of him. But at the same time, he had this other side, which came out of protecting," Kiki Harris said.

When the former Davidson art major chose a career, he put down the paintbrush and picked up a weapon, enlisting in the Navy on Aug. 23, 2000. He was older than most who had entered his class, but he succeeded, becoming one of only 25 of the original 250 in his class, his father said.

Harris was in SEAL training when terrorists attacked Sept. 11, 2001. His sister was living in New York, and although his team was conducting field exercises in which no one was supposed to have a cellphone, Harris got his hands on one and called home.

"I just have to know that Kiki's okay," he told his mother.

Harris is one of 513 Americans who have died in combat operations in or near Afghanistan, the Pentagon said. The family says he will be buried at Arlington with full honors, but no date has been set.

"He said, 'If anything happens to me, realize I was doing exactly what I wanted to be doing,' " Sam Harris said. "I considered him invincible."