Harry Pure. (Photos by Jon Marks)

Harry Pure didn’t start painting until after he’d retired from his longtime job as athletic director of what was originally Philadelphia College of Textiles and Sciences, now Thomas Jefferson University. After all, the man who once served as president of what is now Tiferet Bet Israel in Blue Bell and was co-founder of Camp Comet in Waynesboro, Pennsylvania, needed something to do.

“We’d moved to Florida, where I became an avid tennis player,” said Pure, 97, whose Audobon home is filled with his artwork. “As a result of an injury I began to paint because I couldn’t do anything else. During the day, I’d paint for like four hours. I had an aptitude for it.”

Growing up in South Philadelphia, where four synagogues were within walking distance of his family home, young Harry was too busy playing basketball and softball to worry about anything artistic.

“The whole area had to be 99% Jewish,” said Pure, whose father, Morris, owned a clothing store after coming over from Poland. “I played in the streets and at Starr Garden Playground at 6th and Lombard. Then I played in the Jewish League at the Broadwood. I was high scorer of the league and they gave me the Eddie Gottlieb award for most likely to succeed. That led me to Gettysburg.”

There, he discovered that he was in for a rude awakening while playing four injury-plagued seasons for the Bullets.

“I suddenly went from an all-Jewish environment to a totally gentile environment with only three Jews in the whole school,” said Pure, who majored in physical education and history. “That took an adjustment.”

Upon his 1950 graduation, Pure went into the service, joining the U.S. Coast Guard during the Korean War. Years prior to that, while attending Camp Council in Phoenixville, he met Harriet, who became his wife in 1952.

They first settled down in Waynesboro, not far from Gettysburg, where Pure got a job coaching basketball and teaching history at Waynesboro High. While in Waynesboro, he got involved in a venture that would have a lasting effect on his life as well as on many others.

Harry Pure’s artwork. (Photos by Jon Marks)

“That’s when I met Morgan Levy, who became my partner in the creation of a new camp with innovations in a Space Age world,” recalled Pure about Camp Comet in Waynesboro, a boys’ camp where all the cabins were built in geodesic domes. “The camp’s emphasis was on science, nature and sports.”

Religion, too, had an impact.

“When I speak to campers at many of the reunions we’ve had over the years and ask, ‘What’s the most important thing that you liked about camp?’ invariably they say ‘services,’” he said. “When I think back, they were nondenominational, but they had Jewish overtones.”

After three years in Waynesboro, the Pures moved back closer to home in Plymouth Meeting, while Harry taught history at Upper Merion Area High School. By then, they were raising daughter Jamie and son David, with daughter Shara soon to follow.

Seeking a different challenge is what brought him to the College of Textiles and Sciences in 1960.

“That was a big move to me,” said Pure, who also ran the physical education department. “We had to create a department, and I was the only one with credentials, so they made me athletic director.”

Harry Pure, center, with his son David Pure, left, and his daughter Jamie Stanton, right. (Photos by Jon Marks)

A decade later, Herb Magee, who played there shortly after Pure’s arrival, coached the 29-2 Rams to the NCAA 1970 Division II crown, beating Tennessee State 76-65 in the final in Evansville, Indiana. According to Magee, Pure, who was inducted into the school’s Hall of Fame in 1996, always had what it took to get the job done.

“Harry always had your back,” said Magee, who coached at the school from 1967 to 2022. “Whatever was going on, he was always there to help. Those jobs are tough because he had to combine it with basketball and the phys-ed program, which he started. The way I describe someone like that is he’s a good man. I’m just pleased to know that he’s still with us.”

While the life of an athletic director is hectic enough, Pure added to it by becoming more involved with his shul.

“I had joined Norristown Jewish Community Center and became very active as a board member and eventually became president,” said Pure, whose synagogue merged with Congregation Beth Israel in Lansdale to become TBI in 1989. “Last year during the High Holidays, they put me up on the bimah for a special honor as the oldest president still alive. It was a great honor, and on behalf of all the presidents that had passed, they asked if I would speak for them. When I got up there, I only said one thing: ‘You’re all so very young.’”

While he may be 97, Pure is hardly slowing down. In addition to the painting, he’s involved in several of his building’s activities, writing in its monthly magazine, working with the nature club and the Jewish interest group and studying current events.

“He really is an icon for so many people,” said his son, David, who comes in from Boulder, Colorado, every six weeks or so to see his dad. “Whether it was at Philadelphia Textile or the camp, which spanned 30 years. Everybody still wants to know how he’s doing because he’s affected so many people’s lives.”

The whole family, which includes eight grandchildren and seven great-grandchildren, will gather on Aug. 15 to celebrate the patriarch.

“I appreciate the simple things more than ever before,” said Pure. “I like to stay active.”

Jon Marks is a Philadelphia-area freelance writer.