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Bob Harrington, a long-time civic volunteer who worked on numerous political campaigns and who had spent decades advocating for a faster and more reliable internet service in Palo Alto, died on June 8. He was 84.
While Harrington was not a native to the city, he spent most of his life in Palo Alto, first moving out from Cedar Rapids to attend Stanford University in 1959. Ten years later, he settled with his wife and four children in the Embarcadero Oaks neighborhood.
The neighborhood choice was a pivotal moment in what would later become Harrington’s legacy of fiber network advocacy. In 1999, he was able to get his street enrolled in Palo Alto’s fiber-to-home trial system, bringing reliable high-speed internet to residences — something that was typically reserved for corporations.
Harrington often led and hosted meetings for Fiber to the Premises (FTTP), said Andy Poggio, who worked with him for many years. Poggio described Harrington as “politically astute” and a “strong organizer.”
“He was very generous, and we met many times in his house,” he said. “We met there more than any other location.”
Although FTTP efforts stalled during the Great Recession, city officials are preparing to set rates and install municipal fiber networks for residents near Greer Park in an experiment to outperform competitors like Comcast and AT&T.
“The good news is the city is finally acting on something that (Harrington) and the rest of us tried to convince the city to do for a long time,” Poggio said. “It’s disappointing it didn’t happen much, much sooner.”
Harrington was also involved in many other community efforts in Palo Alto, such as serving on the Channing House Board of Directors and working on campaigns for City Council. He was honored with the Avenidas Life Time of Achievement Award in 2015.
“There’s a Palo Alto process that you hear and read about, but it’s not unreasonable,” Harrington told this publication at the time. “A lot of preparation needs to go into most decisions to make them excellent decisions, and I think this community has a pretty stellar record of decisions that are made and the implementation of those decisions.”
Before his retirement in 1992, the Iowa native worked as an investment broker for more than two decades at Dean Witter, where he also broadcast business reports for radio and television stations in San Francisco and San Jose.
People who knew him remember Harrington as a generous and hard-working person with a deep commitment to his community.
“I’ll say that he put forward a thoughtful vision for whatever project he engaged on,” said City Council member Pat Burt, who had known Harrington for several decades.
Family members hosted a Celebration of Life for Harrington on July 27 at the Lucy Stern Community Center.
Harrington is survived by his wife Margie, his four children, and dozens of grandchildren and great-grandchildren.
