Alfred Harrington, loving husband, dad

ALFRED Gordon Harrington was a man who put everyone at ease with his disarming smile and easygoing manner.

He was a devoted family man and a hard worker, said his daughter Gail Harrington - two attributes she fondly remembers of her dad.

Harrington died of heart failure on Dec. 20, two days before his 89th birthday. He lived in Mount Airy.

Born in Rockingham, N.C. to Alfred and Ahavia Harrington in 1918, Harrington was the youngest of six children.

During his years at Capital Highway High School, in Rockingham, he met his future wife, the former Korean Ellerbe. They married in Philadelphia in 1943 and had three children.

Harrington served in the Army Air Corps during World War II. After his return, he worked briefly as a bricklayer. He later became a forklift operator for the U.S. Postal Service and rose to treasurer and later president of Mailhandler's Union Local 308. He retired in 1981.

Harrington's nephew Acel Moore, an editor emeritus at the Philadelphia Inquirer, remembered him as an avid reader who kept up with local and national politics. "I am glad to have spent time with him," said Moore. "My uncle was a unionist and a skillful negotiator, and people respected him."

Harrington enjoyed baseball, fishing and cooking, and demonstrated the same enthusiasm for his family, his daughter said.

Every day, without fail, he brought flowers to his wife, who suffers from dementia and lives in a nursing home, his daughter said.

"He had to have three knee-replacement surgeries because he wore them out," she said. "That's how dedicated he was."

Besides his daughter and wife, Harrington is survived by another daughter, Kimberley Harrington, and a son, Alfred Gordon Harrington III.

Services: The viewing will be from 9 to 11 a.m. today at Grace Baptist Church, 25 W. Johnson St., Germantown with the funeral following. Burial will be at Ivy Hill Cemetery, 1201 Easton Road. *