Jesse Walter Harman was born on 13th April 1921 and, after leaving school, worked as an errand boy in Tunbridge Wells. He joined the merchant navy around 1938 and served throughout the war as a steward. One ship he was serving on was torpedoed in the Irish Sea and he spent many hours in the water. Another was one of the very few merchant ships to sink a German u-boat in the pacific. They only had one shot to defend themselves and they scored a direct hit.

Jack, as he preferred to be called, settled in New Zealand in 1944 and married Irene Dixon. He worked as a carpenter for an Auckland builder and saw the potential market for prefabricated garages and sheds and small cottages. He advertised in the paper and, having secured some sales, worked on and pre-built the units at home on a vacant piece of land. He then arranged for a carrier to deliver them during the week and then he would cycle out to the site on a push bike and work all the weekends assembling the pre-nailed sections. He later formed a company which rapidly expanded. Production reached at least three fairly large garages per day or a small beach cottage of about 600 square feet. Four men including Jack and Fred would erect the cottage and line the interior ready for painting in just one week.

Jack was always looking for opportunities to go into other projects but, unfortunately, most of the companies he invested in were not successful although this was through no fault of his own. One of his biggest disappointments, and probably the one that brought on his death through worry, was a venture into canning pineapple and paw-paw in the islands. A company was formed and a site chosen in Apia in Western Samoa. Jack's company, "Harman Building Ltd.", was given a contract to supply a complete factory. This was to include all the interior as well as electric wiring, plumbing etc. Jack was to spend on and off two years supervising the factory and struggling to obtain sufficient supplies of pineapple from independent islanders who only worked when they ran out of money and mostly sold their pineapple to the opposition factory anyway. Plenty of paw-paw was available and was canned and shipped to New Zealand. Unfortunately, it did not sell. In these days there would be no difficulty because New Zealand, and in particular Auckland, has a very high Polynesian population. Jack realized belatedly that the company in Apia was importing the cans, labels, sugar and purifying chemicals and then shipping them all back out again plus the fruit. The company collapsed. This, in turn, affected Harman Building Ltd's ability to survive because it never got reimbursed for the factory it had supplied in the first place.

Jack died of cancer in 1970, aged 48.

During his marriage he had five children:
Jacqueline who was born in 1951 and married Terrence Buckley. They have two children, Paula and Rowan.
Susan who was born in 1953 and married George Parry. They have three children - David, Daniel and Matthew.
Phillipia, Andrew and Paul are not married.
He and his wife also adopted one son named Stephen.