Bernard Leslie Harris was born on May 2nd 1932 to Mark and Esther Harris in London, England. His father worked for Handley Page, an early designer and manufacturer of military and civilian aircraft. While Bernard was a young boy, the Germans began bombing London in WWII. He volunteered as an aircraft spotter relaying when he saw foreign aircraft, how many and what type to tell authorities there were; prior to the introduction of radar. He also was a high jumper for his high school track team.

In 1948, he began serving a prestigious apprenticeship with Handley Page while studying Mechanical and Production Engineering at London University. He graduated in 1953 and began his service in the Royal Army. He was stationed in Monchengladbach, Germany as a captain in the Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers. In Germany, he met his beloved wife, Hermione Dora Round. He always said he knew the moment he saw her that she was the one he would marry. She was known to all as Chris. Chris served as a teacher and taught the children the of Army personnel stationed there.

In May 1956, they married, and soon after Bernard left the Army to pursue work in the aeronautics industry. A lot of new activity in this area was happening in the United States. They made the decision to start a new adventure and move to the US. They were 2 of only 6 passengers on a freighter that took them from England to Canada over a 3 week period. They immigrated to the United States from there, where he accepted a position with Boeing in the Seattle area. Later in his career, he worked for a NASA contractor where he designed a patented mount which was used for gyroscopes and accelerometers for the Apollo space program. He also helped design the F-111 fighter bomber.

When defense contracting fell out of favor in the early 1970s, Bernard turned his efforts to civilian mechanical engineering. In conjunction with his work, he published several papers for professional magazines concerning hydraulics and pneumatics as well as the intricacies of bearings. He worked with heavy machinery including printing presses and amusement park rides such as “Fire in the Hole” at Silver Dollar City. For the last 25 years of his work career he was a Senior Project Engineer primarily working with of transmissions for very heavy equipment such as the Terex Titan and other machinery. He maintained his certifications as a professional engineer and kept working even in retirement, applying his expertise in engineering to accident scene investigations.

During their lives Bernard and Chris were avid travelers and visited over 80 countries. Two of their favorites were New Zealand and Croatia. Bernard passed away on Saturday December 19th in Springfield, Missouri. He was preceded in death by his wife Chris, his sister Rennie Lawson, and her husband Ron Lawson. He is survived by his sons Christopher Neil Harris, Jonathon Paul Harris and his wife Elaine, and grandchildren Kendall and Andrew Harris.