Irving Harris, 94, Head Start Booster
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Irving B. Harris, a businessman who donated millions of dollars to programs that support children’s welfare and the arts, died Saturday at his Chicago home. He was 94.
Harris, the former chairman of the Pittway Corp., was an advocate for the creation of Project Head Start in the 1960s. He also helped create and fund the Yale Child Studies Center at his alma mater.
“I believe that God’s gift of brain potential is not discriminatory,” Harris wrote in his 1996 book “Children in Jeopardy: Can We Break the Cycle of Poverty?” “Kindergarten is much too late to worry if a child is ready to learn.”
