Dale was the youngest of eight children born to Fred and Gertrude Harvey in Bainville, Montana. The Harvey clan moved west when the town plunged into the middle years of the Great Depression. After a brief stint in Charlo, they planted themselves in the Flathead Valley—a place Dale would call his true home for the rest of his life.
After graduating from high school, he earned his bachelor’s degree in English from the University of Montana and then his MA from Reed. He settled happily into a career of teaching and married Nancy Ettinger. They had three children, Russell, Andrew, and Renee.
Dale taught in Alaska, California, and Oregon, but following the death of his parents, he moved his family back to Kalispell, where he became a professor at the newly founded Flathead Valley Community College, where he taught literature until retiring in 1997.
Dale loved Shakespeare, Mark Twain, and Ernest Hemingway above all others, but Robert Frost, Edgar Lee Masters, and Dylan Thomas held special places in his heart. Theater and music brought him lifelong joy, and he loved building and fixing nearly anything with an engine that predated computers. Horses and cats were his confidants, and his dogs were a part of the family.
He leaves behind his sons, Howard Russell and Andrew Dale, and his ex-wife and dear friend, Nancy.