Scott Harney, October 28, 1955 — May 19, 2019

Scott Harney October 28, 1955 – May 19, 2019 Share this obituary Upload Photo| Sign Guestbook| Send Sympathy Card| Memorial Donation HARNEY, Scott Died on May 19, at his home in Belmont, MA, from complications of congestive heart failure. Born October 28, 1955, at the old Otis Hospital in Cambridge, and raised primarily in Charlestown, Scott was a poet who never published his writing, but was known to those fortunate to read his work as an astute chronicler of life’s vagaries by means of the fleeting incident or scene that captured what it felt like to be alive on this earth. His poems reflected on personal and historical pasts even as they savored “the promise of this day”.

Scott was educated in the public schools in Ipswich, Newton, and Boston. He refused a seat at the prestigious Boston Latin School, then a single- academy, and graduated instead from Charlestown High, the first student in one hundred years to gain acceptance to Harvard. In college he thrived in poetry workshops taught by Jane Shore, Robert B. Shaw, and Robert Lowell.

He read widely in contemporary poetry, developing lifelong passions for the work of Lowell, Richard Hugo, and Philip Levine, whose lines he quoted freely in conversation. After a decade of work in human services, for a youth program in Somerville, and as an aide at McLean Hospital, Scott trained as a paralegal, working for most of his career in financial services at MetLife and Brighthouse Financial as a senior paralegal managing the legal review process. This work supported his abiding interests in poetry, early music, and all things Neapolitan.

He is survived by his beloved mother, Marie Hubbard of Charlestown, his sisters, Judy Jellison of Salisbury and Susan Batson of Winchester, five nephews, and his life partner, Megan Marshall of Belmont. There will be a Memorial Service held for family and friends on Friday, May 24, at 2:30 PM at St. John’s Episcopal Church in Charlestown. In lieu of flowers, donations can be made in his memory to the Italian folk band Newpoli (www.

newpolimusic.com) and to the early music ensemble Seven Times Salt (c/o Karen Burciaga, 36 Circuit St. #2, Medford, MA 02155).

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