Hardy Long Frank

Hardy Long Frank, a longtime resident of Boulder who helped to establish the Women's Studies Program at the University of Colorado and who taught for many years in the University Writing Program, died on November 26th at the Academy at Bella Vista from complications associated with dementia. She was 86. Mary Hardy Long was born in Philadelphia and grew up in Johnson City, Tennessee, and New Orleans, the child of Lucinda Ann and Carroll H. Long, a physician. Choosing to be known as Hardy because of the surfeit of Marys among her contemporaries, she attended Wellesley College and pursued graduate studies in English at the University of Connecticut and the University of Missouri, where she met her future husband, James P. Frank; he was hired as a professor of philosophy at the University of Colorado, and the couple moved to Boulder in 1958. In 1970, she received a Ph.D. from the University of Colorado after completing a dissertation on Geoffrey Chaucer's Canterbury Tales. She took a scholarly interest in the cult of the Virgin Mary and she was an early champion of the significance of the late medieval visionary Margery Kempe. She was a great reader, both in English and French. She loved the English language and the subtleties of its usage. Her affinities and activities were many and varied. She played the piano and the violin, was a group leader for the Experiment in International Living, and at the height of the Civil Rights movement taught for a summer at Miles College in Alabama. In 1966, she received a Fulbright Fellowship to conduct research at the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris, where she moved for a year with her family. Later years were spent abroad in London and Canterbury. She came up with the name of the Jarrow Montessori School and was a member of the editorial board of the feminist journal Frontiers. She wrote a history of the Methodist missionaries in her family. She served on the Boulder Public Library Commission and the Grievance Committee of the Colorado Supreme Court and was an active member of the board of the Boulder Bach Festival. She helped to bring the Tea House from Dushanbe to Boulder. She was a woman of lively intelligence and true dedication who possessed an unfailing grace and wit. Her marriage to James Frank ended in divorce. Hardy Long Frank is survived by four siblings, Jane Hardin, Edwin Long, Frances Long, and Jerry Long; two children, Edwin Frank and Page Zarecki; and two grandchildren, Emma Karasz and Augustus Frank. A memorial service will be held in Boulder in the spring of 2018.