Rome John Hartman IV

From the time he was a toddler, the boy known to family and friends as R.J. could sense when someone needed a hand up, a hug, or a word or gesture of encouragement. His warmth, openness, gentleness, humor, humility, and above all loyalty, drew people to him with magnetic power. All his life, R.J. was the best friend to have, particularly at a vulnerable moment. At preschool, he and a sweet boy named Brennan became fast friends. Brennan has Downs Syndrome, and he was still trading calls and texts and voicemails with R.J. 30 years after they met. R.J.’s very first friend was Lila; they met as newborns (truly). Lila’s now a mother of four, and when she heard the terrible news this week, she texted this: “A world without R.J.? It just cannot be.” But it is. In a world full of hard edges, R.J. was a softie…all tenderness and heart. He had a special way with little kids, and with dogs. Those close to him know how much he loved his dog Cameron…they were inseparable. R.J. had a heart for the vulnerable, and was vulnerable himself. When his heart was broken, it was very slow to heal.

R.J. and his two-years-younger brother Alex were quite the pair. Both white-blond towheads as little boys, they could step out their front door on Maryknoll Avenue in Bethesda and bring all the neighborhood kids running with a single shout or a whistle. At Burning Tree Elementary and Pyle Middle School, they collected friends for life…dozens of them. The older they got, the more it bothered big brother R.J. that people often mistook them for twins. At Walt Whitman High School, R.J carved himself a singular identity as a leader, an athlete, a bit of a heart-throb, and a natural mimic with a knack for accents and impressions. He absolutely loved being a Whitman Vikings football player; his mom remembers him carefully laying out every part of his uniform, from socks to wristbands, the night before every game.

Sports were woven into R.J.’s life from the very beginning. He learned to read by poring over baseball cards, he was an accomplished second-baseman in Little League, and he became a rabid Duke basketball fan early on. Nearly every time his mom checked his math homework in elementary and middle school, she’d find the names of the entire Duke roster scribbled in the margins. Sometimes he’d even done the math problems. In high school, R.J. worked as a research intern on James Brown’s sports radio show; he showed a real talent for details, taking pride in unearthing an interesting statistical nugget or identifying promising high school athletes as hot recruiting targets. And he and J.B. became friends in the process…when R.J. graduated from Whitman, J.B. was the commencement speaker. R.J. went on to the University of South Carolina, and became an avid Gamecocks fan. Their relative mediocrity in both basketball and football was no deterrent – remember, R.J. was loyal.

As a student at South Carolina, R.J. landed a job working at the Masters golf tournament in Augusta two years in a row…he loved it so much that he went back to work there even after he graduated. He got a real job out of college at Comcast Sportsnet in Bethesda, and was part of the production team for NBC Sports at two Olympics, in London and in Sochi. Very recently, he had taken up coaching kids in a flag football league called Flagstar, founded and run by a dear friend from high school (there it is again…loyalty). It wasn’t easy coaching kids ranging from age 6 to 13 in a pandemic; making sure everyone kept their masks on and up, and sanitizing the footballs between games – even between plays. But R.J. was good at it. He kept the kids safe and he kept them engaged, and he taught them how to play the game and to have fun. He coached his first game of the Spring season two days before he died, and called his dad right after the game. “Dad, I’m so happy I could cry! We were down 21-0, the opposing coach really knew what he was doing, and I felt like a rookie; out of my league. But I rallied the kids, we chipped away at their lead, and we won on a last-second catch. 22-21! The kids on my team went nuts, and one of that dads asked me who I thought ought to play me in the movie!”

When R.J.’s younger brother Alex died in January 2020, it was almost as if he had lost a piece of himself. The grief for his entire family was miles deep, but it was particularly tough for R.J. At times, his grief and trauma seemed to have no bottom. But he fought through it, and lately he was finding sparks of joy again. His high school friend from Flagstar was watching on the sidelines of Sunday’s epic football win. He later texted R.J.’s dad: “He seemed like a guy on the road back.” R.J. had struggled with alcohol addiction and liver disease. He tried hard to overcome both and return to strength and health – and joy - but his body failed him. His “road back” came to an unexpected end far too soon. We can only pray that he and Alex are together again, two beautiful, open-hearted boys stepping out to call the other guys together for a pickup game.

R.J. Is survived by his mom Amy, his dad Rome III, his dear sister-in-law Viveka, his beloved grandmother “Camom,” and a host of aunts, uncles, cousins and dear, dear friends.

In lieu of flowers, donations may be made in R.J.’s honor to:

DC Scores, a non-profit that promotes youth sports participation and character development in the Washington DC area.

www.dcscores.org

The Akiba School in Nairobi, Kenya, where R.J. served one summer in high school.

www.akibaschools.org/donate/

You can also visit the following link to the condolence video from Akiba schools https://vimeo.com/541141701

A celebration of R.J.’s life is being planned, and details will be shared when they are firm.