As Part of Its Farm to Fork Week Celebration- Pitman Manor Residents Welcomed Local Author Charles Harrison

Recently, residents of Pitman Manor had the opportunity to hear a presentation by Charles H. Harrison, local journalist and author. Harrison – a retired adjunct professor from Rowan University, taught writing for 30 years and over that time period authored nearly 20 fiction and non-fiction books. Carrol Stella, Pitman Manor’s Director of Community Life, invited Harrison to speak as part of a program she was doing in conjunction with New Jersey’s Farm to Fork Week, which promotes eating Jersey fresh produce. “It was especially appropriate that Harrison chose to spoke about his book, “Growing a Global Village: The Story of Seabrook Farms.” His presentation touched on how growers move crops from farm to table. He also brought some of his books that were available for sale. Many in the audience did not know that in January 1944, Seabrook Farms began recruiting interned Japanese Americans to southern New Jersey as replacements for its dwindling wartime labor force. Within a year, nearly 1,000 workers had relocated to Seabrook from internment camps throughout the South and Southwest, and the total number of Japanese Americans resettled there reached close to 3,000. Harrison who lives in Woodstown, NJ told the residents gathered in the auditorium. “I try to write about interesting people and events … and how those people shaped events, and ultimately, how people shaped history.” Before he was a professor and author he worked as a “newspaper man” with the Bergen Record as an education writer for several years.