Harry Elliot

Alvan Levenson, who writes under the pseudonym Harry Elliot, was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts and grew up in Brookline, where he lived around the corner from the eventual governor of the state, Michael Dukakis. Kitty Dickson, who would one day become the state’s First Lady, also crossed Levenson’s path; they spent four years as Brookline High School classmates. At their commencement ceremonies, however, Levenson was not in attendance. He had, on his seventeenth birthday, joined the U.S. Marine Corps. While …