Hardy AR Funeral Homes
$20 OFF
Heart-felt tributes to honor a dear friend or loved one who has passed away
3079 Highway 62
Hardy, AR 72542
(870) 856-5656
Hardy AR Obituaries and Death Notices
Monday, March 27, 2017State Farmer and Honorary American Farmer in recognition of the success of his students with FFA. He also taught adult farmer education programs and became director of vocational education in Hardy County in 1975. After retiring in 1986, he managed the East Hardy High Scholarship Fund, which he helped establish.He received a master’s degree in agriculture education from West Virginia University in 1954. He was a member of the Mathias Ruritan Club, earning a 50-year-plus perfect attendance record, 2 terms as president, 1 year as West Virginia District Governor, and “Ruritan of the Year.” He attended Cove Chapel United Methodist Church, teaching Sunday School for over 50 years. He also loved family gatherings.He is survived by his wife, Florence; 3 sons, Wendell and wife Faye of Mount Jackson, Darrell and wife Madaline of Alexandria, and Mark and wife Joyce, of Raleigh, N.C.; 7 grandchildren; 3 great-grandchildren; and 1 sister, Dorothy Newhouse of Baltimore.The family will receive friends from 6 to 8 p.m. on Sunday, March 26 at McKee Funeral Home in Baker.A funeral service will be conducted at 11 a.m. on Monday, March 27 at the funeral home with Rev. Jonathan Hedrick and Pastor Heather Rogers officiating. Burial will be at Cedar Hill Cemetery in Mathias.Contributions may be made in his honor to the East Hardy High Scholarship Fund or other charities.All arrangements are being handled by McKee Funeral Home in Baker. ...
Monday, March 27, 2017While completing his master’s degree, Bob married Catherine Hardy, his college girlfriend. They returned to UW where Bob began his Ph.D. program in the fall of 1960. Bob learned programming on UW’s first computer and entered the data he had collected from the Wasatch Range on punch cards – one card for each species in every plot in every stand sampled – an immense task. Bob received his Ph. D. in 1963 in botany and zoology and was hired to teach at the University of Denver. While there, he started the Colorado chapter of The Nature Conservancy, served on ski patrol at Arapahoe Basin, and helped start the DU Alpine Club. He honed his skiing skills while in Colorado, and skiing became a lifelong passion he shared with family and friends.Bob was hired by the U.S. Forest Service in 1966 to study ecology in Minnesota’s million-acre Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness. Over the next three years he was able to hike and canoe most of the trails and lakes in the BWCA. During this period, Bob met Dr. Dave Mech, who was studying wolves in Isle Royale National Park in Michigan, and began assisting Dave there and in the BWCA. This was the only area in the lower 48 states then inhabited by wolves, and Bob was with Dave in 1968 when the team captured the first wolf and radio-collared it. In 1969, Bob was offered a faculty position in the University of Montana’s School of Forestry by Dean Arnold Bolle, a noted conservation leader, and moved to the state he would call home for the rest of his life. He began the Wolf Ecology Project in 1973 and determined no established pack or breeding pair existed in Montana. He received funding to hire two biologists, and in 1979 they trapped a wolf in the North Fork of the Flathead River valley and tracked her for a year and a half. This wolf found a mate and produced seven pups in 1982, marking the first pack documented in the northern U.S. Rockies in at least 50 years. By 1995, Bob estimated 80 wolves resided in northwest Montana, and wolves now appear to have become a stable part of Montana’s wildlife ecosystem again. Bob was well known for heading up the Wolf Ecology Project, but he took most pride in the Wilderness and Civilization Program he established at UM in 1975. The W&C Program is an interdisciplinary program providing students an opportunity to explore humans’ relationship to wilderness and civilization, and includes faculty from wilderness management, ecology, philosophy, Native American studies, economics, creative writing, and others. The program begins each fall with a 10-12 day backpack trip, combining outdoor skills with education. Bob often described how students’ inhibitions dissolved during the trip, which stimulated lively class discussions once they returned to their traditional classroom settings. Thousands of students studied with Bob during his tenure at UM, in courses such as resource conservation, large mammal conservation, wildlife ecology and management, habitat management, and wilderness management, and Bob helped launch the careers of many talented conservationists. Bob capped his UM career as Acting Dean of the School of Forestry from 1993-1994.Bob was passionately involved in politics. He served in the Montana Legislature as a representative from Missoula from 1983-1997, where he distinguished himself on fish and game, taxation, and natural resource issues, sponsoring Montana’s stream access law, mini-Superfund law, and restitution payments for illegally taken wildlife, among others. Bob served as Chair of the Montana Democratic Party from 1997-2005, a period in which the Party saw significant electoral gains at the legislative and statewide levels. Bob’s other professional accomplishments incl...
Monday, March 06, 2017The Truck Company was known in town and folks would call Fraker's to get them to help move furniture. I can just picture those guys fighting a piano up steep stairs like Laurel and Hardy! They could also put a crew together to do handyman jobs like cleaning gutters, which they did at the Frakers' house as well.When they got busy they added on hourly workers, and in summer or weekends the kids would join in when they got big enough. This work ethic helped inspire Pop's grandson Curtis Rivers Jr. to pick up extra jobs in town and save up for a 10-speed bike he wanted. There's something about earning something the old-fashioned way ... especially if it's the first something in the neighborhood like that 10-speed was. For the kids helping at the "truck stop" behind Fraker's one of the treats was a foot-long for lunch from the Cremo across the tracks.The trucks had a second life for the black community. Sometimes Pop would leave in the morning from the east side of town and the kids would catch a ride on the truck to school. It got you there faster and for a kid, it's always fun riding the back of a truck.On certain weekends the kids would load up the trucks and go to the "colored...
Hardy News
Monday, March 27, 2017State Farmer and Honorary American Farmer in recognition of the success of his students with FFA. He also taught adult farmer education programs and became director of vocational education in Hardy County in 1975. After retiring in 1986, he managed the East Hardy High Scholarship Fund, which he helped establish.He received a master’s degree in agriculture education from West Virginia University in 1954. He was a member of the Mathias Ruritan Club, earning a 50-year-plus perfect attendance record, 2 terms as president, 1 year as West Virginia District Governor, and “Ruritan of the Year.” He attended Cove Chapel United Methodist Church, teaching Sunday School for over 50 years. He also loved family gatherings.He is survived by his wife, Florence; 3 sons, Wendell and wife Faye of Mount Jackson, Darrell and wife Madaline of Alexandria, and Mark and wife Joyce, of Raleigh, N.C.; 7 grandchildren; 3 great-grandchildren; and 1 sister, Dorothy Newhouse of Baltimore.The family will receive friends from 6 to 8 p.m. on Sunday, March 26 at McKee Funeral Home in Baker.A funeral service will be conducted at 11 a.m. on Monday, March 27 at the funeral home with Rev. Jonathan Hedrick and Pastor Heather Rogers officiating. Burial will be at Cedar Hill Cemetery in Mathias.Contributions may be made in his honor to the East Hardy High Scholarship Fund or other charities.All arrangements are being handled by McKee Funeral Home in Baker. ...
Monday, March 27, 2017While completing his master’s degree, Bob married Catherine Hardy, his college girlfriend. They returned to UW where Bob began his Ph.D. program in the fall of 1960. Bob learned programming on UW’s first computer and entered the data he had collected from the Wasatch Range on punch cards – one card for each species in every plot in every stand sampled – an immense task. Bob received his Ph. D. in 1963 in botany and zoology and was hired to teach at the University of Denver. While there, he started the Colorado chapter of The Nature Conservancy, served on ski patrol at Arapahoe Basin, and helped start the DU Alpine Club. He honed his skiing skills while in Colorado, and skiing became a lifelong passion he shared with family and friends.Bob was hired by the U.S. Forest Service in 1966 to study ecology in Minnesota’s million-acre Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness. Over the next three years he was able to hike and canoe most of the trails and lakes in the BWCA. During this period, Bob met Dr. Dave Mech, who was studying wolves in Isle Royale National Park in Michigan, and began assisting Dave there and in the BWCA. This was the only area in the lower 48 states then inhabited by wolves, and Bob was with Dave in 1968 when the team captured the first wolf and radio-collared it. In 1969, Bob was offered a faculty position in the University of Montana’s School of Forestry by Dean Arnold Bolle, a noted conservation leader, and moved to the state he would call home for the rest of his life. He began the Wolf Ecology Project in 1973 and determined no established pack or breeding pair existed in Montana. He received funding to hire two biologists, and in 1979 they trapped a wolf in the North Fork of the Flathead River valley and tracked her for a year and a half. This wolf found a mate and produced seven pups in 1982, marking the first pack documented in the northern U.S. Rockies in at least 50 years. By 1995, Bob estimated 80 wolves resided in northwest Montana, and wolves now appear to have become a stable part of Montana’s wildlife ecosystem again. Bob was well known for heading up the Wolf Ecology Project, but he took most pride in the Wilderness and Civilization Program he established at UM in 1975. The W&C Program is an interdisciplinary program providing students an opportunity to explore humans’ relationship to wilderness and civilization, and includes faculty from wilderness management, ecology, philosophy, Native American studies, economics, creative writing, and others. The program begins each fall with a 10-12 day backpack trip, combining outdoor skills with education. Bob often described how students’ inhibitions dissolved during the trip, which stimulated lively class discussions once they returned to their traditional classroom settings. Thousands of students studied with Bob during his tenure at UM, in courses such as resource conservation, large mammal conservation, wildlife ecology and management, habitat management, and wilderness management, and Bob helped launch the careers of many talented conservationists. Bob capped his UM career as Acting Dean of the School of Forestry from 1993-1994.Bob was passionately involved in politics. He served in the Montana Legislature as a representative from Missoula from 1983-1997, where he distinguished himself on fish and game, taxation, and natural resource issues, sponsoring Montana’s stream access law, mini-Superfund law, and restitution payments for illegally taken wildlife, among others. Bob served as Chair of the Montana Democratic Party from 1997-2005, a period in which the Party saw significant electoral gains at the legislative and statewide levels. Bob’s other professional accomplishments incl...
Monday, March 06, 2017The Truck Company was known in town and folks would call Fraker's to get them to help move furniture. I can just picture those guys fighting a piano up steep stairs like Laurel and Hardy! They could also put a crew together to do handyman jobs like cleaning gutters, which they did at the Frakers' house as well.When they got busy they added on hourly workers, and in summer or weekends the kids would join in when they got big enough. This work ethic helped inspire Pop's grandson Curtis Rivers Jr. to pick up extra jobs in town and save up for a 10-speed bike he wanted. There's something about earning something the old-fashioned way ... especially if it's the first something in the neighborhood like that 10-speed was. For the kids helping at the "truck stop" behind Fraker's one of the treats was a foot-long for lunch from the Cremo across the tracks.The trucks had a second life for the black community. Sometimes Pop would leave in the morning from the east side of town and the kids would catch a ride on the truck to school. It got you there faster and for a kid, it's always fun riding the back of a truck.On certain weekends the kids would load up the trucks and go to the "colored...
