Born in Yonkers, New York on August 15th, Erwin Goldblum Harris (1921-2013) was a renowned advertising executive, primarily based out of Miami, Florida. He received his undergraduate degree in New York University and his postgraduate degree in aerial mapping from Columbia University. He also served in the United States Military Forces as a Combat Intelligence Officer during World War II and married Therese Deutsch Harris, with whom he had three children and six grandchildren. In 1947, he went into a business partnership with Hank Meyer (Meyer & Harris) and later went on to form his own company (Harris & Company Advertising, Inc.) in 1952.
While leading Harris & Company Advertising, Inc., Harris secured several large, notable clients for his firm, including the Fontainebleau Hotel, the Eden Roc Hotel, the American Hotel, Intercontinental Hotels, the Havana Riviera, Cutty Sark, the American Society of Travel Agents, and Miami's infamous Interama Exhibition, which never came to fruition. His works largely focused on commercial promotional materials within the United States, the Caribbean, and Latin America, but he also contributed to advertising for former President John F. Kennedy's campaign in Florida, as well as the election campaigns for former Senator Spessard Holland and former Governor Farris Bryant.
Though Harris had gained a modest amount of fame and respect for his prolific design aesthetic, he became well known on a global scale during 1960 and 1961, while the Communist Revolution was at its height in Cuba, when he had obtained court documents to seize goods from the Cuban government after he had been left unpaid for the advertising campaign he had created for the Instituto Nacional de la Industria Turística (INIT) in Cuba. Among the goods seized were two Cubana Airlines passenger planes, five cargo planes, a Cuban Navy vessel, a boatload of Cuban cigars, 1 million pounds of insecticide, and 3.5 million pounds of cooking lard. His legal dispute with the Fidel Castro regime had gained him a lot of fans and support, but unfortunately, he had been unable to fully recover financially and had to eventually file for bankruptcy.