In memoriam: Harry Kotses (1938–2017)

Emeritus Professor Harry Kotses died at his home in Sanibel, Florida, on March 7, 2017, at the age of 78. Family, friends, colleagues, and students will remember Harry for the multiple roles he embraced during a life of purpose—as husband, father, grandfather, teacher, professor, mentor, and scholar—lived with authenticity, compassion and encouragement, humility and humor, patience, and reflection. It is an honor for me to contribute this remembrance for a man I knew for 38 years as mentor, colleague, and friend.

Harry began his academic career at Ohio University in Athens in 1970, advancing through the ranks from Assistant Professor to Professor, to Emeritus Professor in 1998. Harry was methodical and meticulous in his research activities; he was equally committed to the protection of human subjects, scientific integrity, and professionalism. His clarity of thinking was reflected in the clarity of his writing; he had a gift for communicating with precision the purpose of his investigations and the core of his findings. Harry directed a dozen dissertations—I show up in the middle of that list—and alone or with his colleagues and students he published 100 articles, book chapters and technical reports, and presented an equivalent number of papers at regional, national, and international scientific meetings. In 2006, he was recognized for his achievements internationally, and was presented the Award for Distinguished Contributions to Respiratory Psychophysiology by the International Society for the Advancement of Respiratory Psychophysiology. I did all I could to prevent Harry from ever retiring: we secured federal funding for a pediatric asthma trial in 2004, and co-edited Asthma, health and society in 2010 [1,2]; perhaps fittingly, our last publication together, in 2015, appeared in this journal [3].

Harry was born on September 29, 1938, in Martins Ferry, Ohio, to Pete and Stamtia Kotses, the first in his family to be born in the United States. As was common at the time, his father came to the United States ahead of other family members, arriving in 1924; his mother and younger sister Grace were not able to join Pete until the spring of 1937. Harry's older sister, Stamatoula, stayed behind in Greece and Harry never met her until he travelled to Greece for the first time, in 1983. When he was four Harry's family moved to Warren, Ohio—by chance next door to Youngstown where I was raised—and two of Stamtia's brothers lived in the same household. One brother, Gus, nurtured Harry's belief in the value of learning, which was evident throughout his academic career. In 1950, the family moved to Bethlehem, PA, to join his sister Grace who by then had married Gust C. Zarnas. Gust had played for The Ohio State University football team and was recognized as an All-American in 1937; he shaped Harry's lifelong enthusiasm for Ohio State football.

Harry graduated from Liberty High School, Bethlehem, in 1956, and then completed a Bachelor of Arts degree in psychology at Lehigh University in 1960. The effect of his studies with faculty at Lehigh on his early research interests is apparent—they were intimately familiar with the original classical conditioning studies conducted by the great Russian physiologists, including Pavlov. Harry subsequently completed a Master of Arts degree at Temple University, in 1964, and then spent two years working at the Human Resources Research Office (HumRRO) at Fort Benning, Georgia. He earned a Ph.D. in experimental psychology in 1969 from Michigan State University under the guidance of David C. Raskin; and then spent a year as Assistant Professor of Child Psychiatry at Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri, under the supervision of John A. Stern. Harry remembered watching the clock closely one day that year, to view the first manned mission to land on the moon in July 1969, an event that carried particular significance for him.

Harry's early work covered topics mainstream to psychophysiology at the time: orienting and defensive reflexes, individual response stereotypy, and conditioning of autonomic nervous systems responses. His most continuous line of inquiry, however, turned on the behavioral and environmental control of asthma. In the late 1970s, he embarked on a series of studies with several students examining effects of facial muscle relaxation on pulmonary function that first began at Bronco Junction Asthmatic Camp in West Virginia. Those activities accelerated when Thomas L. Creer joined the Department of Psychology at Ohio University in 1980. Tom had served as Director of the Division of Behavioral Sciences at the National Asthma Center, which merged with National Jewish Hospital at Denver in 1978. Over the next two decades Harry and Tom collaborated on dozens of publications—many involving student co-authors—concerned with the effectiveness of asthma self-management programs in both pediatric and adult patients from both applied and theoretical perspectives. Both Harry and Tom were keen contributors to the development of the Journal of Asthma as well, serving at different times as Associate Editors. Harry lost a valued colleague and friend when Tom passed away at the age of 76 in 2011.

Harry is survived by his wife Kandee S. Grossman, whom he married in 1997; sons Peter A. Kotses (Meredith Erlewine) and Nicholas G. Kotses (Susan Miller); a granddaughter, Kate Kotses; and former spouse Grace H. Kotses (nee Anamisakis), mother to Peter and Nicholas. He was preceded in death by his father, Pete (Pantelis) Kotses, in 1980, and his mother, Stamtia (nee Tsarnas), in 1976; and his two sisters, Stamatoula Pasvanis (1999) and Grace Zarnas (2002).

Harry was liberal of thought, sensible of mind, and socially conscious; he was respectful, and in turn respected. Curiosity for him was a habit. Harry was always an optimist and so it was easy to be with him. He was well read and well informed on a number of subjects—current fiction, history, international affairs and politics—and so it was easy to have a conversation with him. Harry was also proud of his family and his Greek heritage and so “Life to you, may you remember him.”

Respectfully,

Andrew Harver