Their mother died when young Harold was 7 years old and his grandparents, Lillian A. Willets and Warren Wood Pierce of Bridgeton, New Jersey, raised him.

On November 22, 1945, Harold married Constance Ella Mason, a mathematician and teacher in the Philadelphia school system.

In 1951, as the Korean War peaked, Pierce accepted an assignment as the Chief of Dermatology at the 1600 USAF Hospital at Westover Air Force Base in Massachusetts.

After many distinguished years, he resigned from the Air Force National Guard[3] in 1976 and was promoted in 1987 on the Retired list to the rank of Brigadier General.

Pierce is the editor of the book Cosmetic Plastic Surgery in Nonwhite Patients, Grune & Stratton (New York, 1982).