Nancy Clair Hardwick

Nancy Clair Hardwick, 72, passed away very early in the morning of July 2 due to the progression of ALS, which she was diagnosed with in 2022.

Nancy's capacity for joy was never dimmed; even as the disease diminished her ability to move and to talk, she still found much to love about being alive. If you followed her on Instagram or Facebook, you know exactly what I mean.

Nancy had two distinct ways of being. One was the radiant extravert who could talk up a storm, tell a million stories, and fill a room with laughter. The other was the solitary introvert who loved the ocean, the beach, and the marshes of her beloved Georgia coast, as well as the highland desert of New Mexico.

She employed her extraverted side to run a BBQ restaurant and then a gift shop, Indigo and Cotton, on St. Simons Island, and then when she moved west to Santa Fe, New Mexico, to manage an Eileen Fisher store for many years. Her quiet side required solitude for restoration and was the source of her art; Nancy created beauty through her painting and in her living spaces. Everyone who knew her artistic work wished that she had painted more, but being an artist isn't easy, especially when you have to work for a living.

She left Santa Fe and moved back South 8 years ago to be with her mother, Joan Hardwick. Nancy wished she had come back sooner, but she was happy that her last year with her mother was one of mutual tenderness. Nancy began painting again and made some stunning pieces. She had real talent-and sold many prints of her works, particulary her well-known painting "The Menhaden Fishermen" owned by many people. In this bold painting, taken from a photograph of four fishermen hauling in a net, Nancy renders their everyday, backbreaking work into the noble struggle that it is. Unfortunately, the onset of ALS curtailed her ability to create art and cut short a late flourishing.

Nancy seemed to know everybody. You know that parlor game from a while back, "7 degrees of Separation from Kevin Bacon"? You could easily play it substituting Nancy for Kevin. And maybe shorten it, make it 4 degrees of separation. You know, pick, say, Michelle Obama. Easy. Nancy knew Jane Fonda and Jane Fonda knows Michelle Obama. Just two moves. You can make up your own. You can use Woody Guthrie or Sam Shepard or, probably, even one of The Beatles.

She had a massive memory for stories, family or otherwise. It is said that when a person dies, it's as if a library burns down. Never was this more true than with Nancy. Those of us in her family have lost our major archivist. Were it not for Nancy, we would have forgotten that her father, Lester Hardwick, an avid outdoorsman, was on family vacation in Cuba and was invited to go fishing with Ernest Hemingway...but had to decline due to family obligations.

She loved people and people loved her. She made friends upon friends, starting with E. Rivers Elementary School, to Westminster School, and up through the University of Georgia where she was in the ADPi sorority and majored in art.

Nancy was also a seeker--and a brave one. Nancy was adopted, and when she became an adult she looked into her biological origins and made distant and brief contact with her birth mother. Most importantly, the information from her birth mother led to her making contact and lasting relationships with her biological father's three other children, Becca Brock, Fletcher Brock, and Jono Brock. Through them she also met their halfsister, Kristin Frazier and Fletcher's wife, Cally Huttar. To meet the siblings she was biologically related to was a kind of turning point in Nancy's life. She became close to all of them. What had been an ancient question about her history was answered, and she loved telling the story about her first meeting with Fletcher and how magical it felt.

Nancy possessed a strong, if unconventional, spiritual sense, and she found signs and connections where others might not. She found meaning in a feather, a rock split in half, a dream. She connected dots and made pictures, where others might just see dots; coincidences were not just coincidences. Her world was woven together by layers of meaning. To be around her was to be in a world enchanted.

A few things stand out about her last years:

One, I know she would want us to say out loud that she was an avid Democrat. She loved her country and was concerned about the direction her it is now heading. She kept abreast of the news--which sometimes caused her a little extra suffering. That Nancy remained passionate about national politics and the fate of her fellow citizens was just one of the many ways she remained fully engaged in life, despite her declining condition.

Two, the endless circle of loving people who visited Nancy. They were a dedicated core who continued bring her news, conversation, company, comfort and joy. Many traveled from far away to be with her. May we all be so lucky, so loved.

Three, her siblings on her biological mother's side (Lynn Tutan, Jill Tutan Cataldo and Jeff Tutan) found and connected with her. Respecting her birth mother's wishes to stay away, Nancy refrained from contacting her half-siblings on that side. But when Ancestry.com showed they had a sibling, the children lovingly reached out and had a meaningful reunion. Nancy wished it had been sooner when she was in better health but she embraced it all the same.

And lastly, her cousin and lifelong friend Amy Beattie was the saving grace of the Nancy's last years. Part angel, part CEO, Amy took care of everything, including assembling an amazing and dedicated care team. Linda, Okevia, Christina, Kass, and Heather treated Nancy just as they would one of their own, and they came to love her, just like the rest of us.

Nancy was the last of her nuclear family, but is survived by nephews Chris and Richard Hardwick, and by cousins Lynn Hardwick Smith, Caroline Hardwick Booker, Amy Hardwick Beattie, Joanie Starr Thomas and Thrower Starr.

If you'd like to make a donation in her memory, we would suggest choosing one of three domains: the ALS United of Georgia (https://alsgeorgia.org) or an organization which protects the environment (like the Georgia Conservancy or the Audubon Society) or choose a charity for those who are less fortunate (a local food bank, Save the Children, or Feeding America).