John William Hardy, 1930–2012

Abstract

John William Hardy, Elective Member of the AOU since 1964 and Fellow since 1971, died in Gainesville, Florida, on October 1, 2012, at 82 years of age. Like many ornithologists, Bill Hardy was a boy birdwatcher, collecting Fuertes cards from his mother’s Arm & Hammer baking soda packages, finding a Summer Tanager nest in the backyard when he was four years old, and at seven helping his uncle install a Purple Martin house in the yard. He would go on to pioneer the creation, collection, and distribution of sound recordings that are now considered as important as study skins and skeletons in many museums’ bird collections. Bill was born on January 12, 1930, in Murphysboro, Illinois, a small town 50 miles north of the junction of the Ohio and Mississippi rivers. His biology teacher at Murphysboro Township High School, E. Esther Smith, was an important influence. She had a strong interest in natural history, and The Auk was among the journals and books available in her laboratory. She joined the AOU in 1949 and remained a member at least until 1985. Through the school’s Audubon Biology Club, which Ms. Smith began, students were encouraged to prepare projects for yearly state science fairs sponsored by the Illinois Academy of Science. These were often small research projects based on original data. One of Bill’s projects, with two other students, was a study of the seasonal occurrence of birds in the state’s seven southernmost counties. Although not publicly distributed, this was the first checklist of the birds of southern Illinois. While in high school, Bill spent a few hours a day closely observing martins, putting into practice the outline for a life-history study in Joseph J. Hickey’s (1943) Guide to Bird Watching. Years later, in 1962, Bill and Richard Johnston, his graduate advisor at the University of Kansas, coauthored a paper based mainly on a Kansas martin colony but including Bill’s Illinois observations from the 1946 season, when a few pairs had double brooded. From 1948 to 1952, Bill continued his education at Southern Illinois University, Carbondale, less than 10 miles from home. He majored in zoology, worked part-time in the Cooperative Fisheries laboratory, and founded the Southern Illinois Bird Club, which held a few meetings but did not survive his graduation. For graduate work, Bill moved out of state, taking a teaching assistantship at Michigan State College (soon, University) in East Lansing. His advisor was George W. Wallace, a fine ornithologist who was at that time working on the first college ornithology textbook, An Introduction to Ornithology (Macmillan 1955). When Bill wrote Wallace’s memorial for The Auk, he noted that Wallace had ‘‘nurtured my qualities and gently began the process of sharpening me for the tough road ahead.’’ The two years in Michigan provided good experiences beyond the connections with Wallace and fellow MSU JOHN WILLIAM HARDY in Florida in 1985. Photo credit: Thomas A. Webber