Harrison Cleveland (“Cleve”) Griffin, aged 84, of Kingston, New York, died on June 12, 2023, from complications due to a stroke.

Born on February 24, 1939, in Gainesville, Florida, the eldest son of Elmer Zipprer and Eula (Witt) Griffin, Cleve grew up in numerous locales throughout the South as well as Okinawa and Panama. He always said that he never went to the same school two years in a row. He graduated from Balboa High School in the Panama Canal Zone in 1957. He served in the U.S. Army from 1957 to 1959 primarily in Schweinfurt, Germany, where he was part of a mortar battery. After his time in the army, he attended the University of Washington, graduating with a BA in English in 1964.

After graduating, Cleve got a job as a college textbook sales rep with what was then called Harcourt, Brace & World. He covered various Midwest territories for a few years before ending up in San Francisco and working out of Harcourt’s West Coast office. There, he met his wife Karen Marie Elliott, who also worked at Harcourt at the time, and they married on May 22, 1970. In 1972, he became a College Department procurement editor in political science, anthropology, and geography, and in 1975 he joined Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Inc.’s School Division as an editor, moving to New York City with his wife and infant daughter, Leslie. He continued working for the company for 20 more years through several changes in ownership and relocations to Florida and Texas. He rose through the ranks, overseeing the creation of successful literature textbooks for grades 6–12 and becoming a vice president of Holt, Rinehart & Winston until his retirement in 1995.

Cleve spent his post-retirement years in Kingston doing some freelance editing and learning how to restore the beautiful Victorian home that he and Karen bought in 1997. He was always enthusiastic about learning new skills, and the house presented a perfect opportunity for him to excel.

He is survived by his wife, Karen (Kingston); daughter, Leslie Louise Griffin, and her husband Daniel Bell (New York City); step-granddaughters, Jordan Bell and Marley Bell (New York City); brother, John Zipprer Griffin, and his wife Susan (Sedona, Arizona); brother-in-law, David Edwin Elliott, and his wife Susan (Oakland, California); and four nephews.

Cleve was a devoted reader of the Skeptical Inquirer for decades, the magazine for science and reason published by the Center for Inquiry. Donations can be made in his memory via a PayPal fundraiser: https://www.paypal.com/pools/c/8UYpDx9h6m