John Van Etten Hardy

John V.E. Hardy passed away on August 28, 2021 in Vero Beach, Florida of the Coronavirus. He was 105 years old and approaching his 106th birthday on October 26. It was not to be.

John was born in 1915 in New York City, the second of four children to Toney A. Hardy and Mabel Wisner Ross and spent his youth in Upper Montclair, NJ with his parents and three sisters. He walked over a mile to and from elementary school in Montclair and each day came home to his mother’s lunch, an early sign of a self-discipline evident throughout his long life.

John attended the Woodbury Forest School in Virginia, graduating in 1934, and then entered Princeton University where he majored in chemical engineering, receiving his undergraduate degree in 1938 and a master’s degree the following year. That year he was also awarded second place in a national chemical engineering contest sponsored by the Society of Chemical Engineering, cementing his expertise in his chosen field. He was the last surviving member of his Princeton Class of ’38.

In 1939 John joined the DuPont Company and had a distinguished career, in which, among other objectives, he improved the process for the production of nylon, a DuPont staple, and led the negotiations and establishment of a 50/50 DuPont joint venture with Mitsui, now called the DuPont-Mitsui Polychemicals Co. Mitsui has publicly stated it was the most successful and longest joint venture the company has ever had. John retired from DuPont in the late 1960’s.

But this brief career summary hardly touches the surface of an extraordinary life. In 1940 John met his love and future wife in Margaret “Muggie” Hardy, a West Virginian by birth who majored in chemistry at Vassar but left college to assist DuPont in the war effort. Their chemistry was instantaneous, and they were married on December 1, 1944.

Four children followed and as his responsibilities at DuPont increased, the young family moved back and forth across the country. In 1960, the Hardy’s moved to Tokyo, Japan and Iwakuni, Japan in 1961 before returning to the U.S. in 1962.

John was an exceptional athlete. An accomplished tennis player, he dominated Delaware tennis throughout the 1940’s, winning the state and regional titles throughout the decade and playing with the best players in the country, like Jack Kramer and Margaret Osborne DuPont. In addition, John was also a single handicap golfer who learned his golf swing as a teenager and played until he was 102. He and his younger son won the Pine Valley Father and Son Tournament when he was 72 years old.

He also took skiing seriously after he retired, becoming the oldest ski instructor in Vail for almost a decade and only finally retired from the sport at 94, when he learned a simple fall on ice could be devastating.

As the children moved on to college and their careers, John and Muggie moved on to a retirement of golf, tennis and the aforementioned skiing. They played golf and tennis not only around the country and in Hawaii, but also throughout Europe and Asia. The couple also sought out archeological excavations, participating in three in Spain, Peru, and Argentina. Their most extraordinary adventure, however, was a 10-day trek in Nepal with Tenzing Norgay as their mountaineering guide, the same Sherpa who joined Sir Edmund Hillary becoming the first confirmed climbers to reach the summit of Mount Everest. They also visited the Tiger Tops Elephant Camp in Nepal to see polo played with elephants. They were outgoing, enthusiastic about life and always seeking out new experiences and new challenges!

John’s loving wife, Muggie, passed away at 95 two years ago, after 73 years of marriage, and now John has joined her. May they rest in peace together, as they lived their lives, always together.

Arrangements are by Thomas S. Lowther Funeral Home & Crematory, Vero Beach.