MURFREESBORO, Tenn.– Memorial services are scheduled Tuesday for Col. W. Harold Read, University of Tennessee vice president emeritus of business and finance.
The service is set for 11 a.m. at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church. Read died Saturday at Middle Tennessee Medical Center. He was 89.
UT President Joseph E. Johnson said Read, who retired in 1974, will be remembered as a University of Tennessee official who always did everything the right way.
“Harold Read will be remembered as a gentleman and as a person who had no equal in terms of college and university business management and accounting,” Johnson said. “He was a model of decorum in terms of the way he did things and in the way he treated people.”
A 1930 graduate of UT, Read later earned a master’s degree from Northwestern University and became a certified public accountant.
In a UT career spanning 40 years, Read was first an instructor in the finance department. He was promoted to budget director in 1950 and later to vice president for business and finance.
Read was chair of the National Association of College and University Business Officers accounting principles committee that published a guidebook in 1974 containing standards still being followed.
A World War II veteran, he was appointed chief of the U.S. Army’s overseas accounting branch. Read designed a system for all army accounting outside the continental United States.
He continued to serve in the Army Reserves until his retirement with the rank of colonel in 1968.
Survivors include his wife, Elizabeth Graham Robinson Read; a daughter, Jo Jones, Independence, Kan.; a stepdaughter, Ruth Robinson Garrison, Tempe, Ariz; a sister, Elizabeth Read, Nashville; a grandchildren; two step-grandchildren; and three great-grandchildren.
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