In talking about his job choices, Harmon shares that he and his wife, Pam Dawber, are parenting their sons. Raising his children, Mark Harmon found that having Saturday brunch at home was crucial.
The actor says to PEOPLE in this week’s issue about his new historical non-fiction book Ghosts of Honolulu: A Japanese Spy, a Japanese American Spy Hunter, and the Untold Story of Pearl Harbor, which is out on November 14, that it played a significant part in why he initially accepted his long-running position on NCIS.
Almost two decades ago, Harmon, 72, was trying to figure out how to be home more with his wife, actress Pam Dawber, 73, and their (now-adult) sons, Sean, an actor, and Ty, a screenwriter.
“It was important to be able to make pancakes on Saturday morning,” says Harmon. “And there were some times where that meant not sleeping. You just came home and took a shower and came back down. And yet I look back at it and I don’t miss the sleep.”
“I still missed things,” he acknowledges. “I was working, but I’ve been part of their lives.”
Though being the star of the well-liked CBS series as Special Agent Gibbs wasn’t quite the schedule Harmon had envisioned, it’s a calculated move that has paid off over time. “It’s interesting because I was trying to stay home more with a young family and I was traveling a lot doing movies and other things when I decided to do the show in the first place,” he remembers. “And then I worked 22 hours on my first day on this show—and there were a lot of those days for a long time.”
But his 19-season run ultimately amounted to a steadier fatherly presence, he says. “I was able to make breakfast on the weekend. I’m not about to complain about any of it.”
Since leaving the show Harmon has been able to devote his attention to passion projects like Ghosts of Honolulu, an endeavor that traces the roots of the real naval counterintelligence agency back to a Japanese American spy working in Hawaii during the time of the 1941 Pearl Harbor attack.
The actor, who has been married to Dawber for 36 years, says, “I just feel fortunate.”
We’ve had a wonderful opportunity to develop as a family in many ways. I was largely set in Los Angeles by a choice I made two decades ago. And that’s the work aspect once more. Compared to the personal and familial aspects, it is much different. Additionally, I try not to combine the two.