Walter "Moon" Person Hardee Jr.

Walter Hardee -- beloved patriarch, enthusiastic singer; fun-loving jokester; husband, and family-man – died recently (August, 2020) at the seasoned age of 95 at Springmoor Retirement Community, Raleigh, NC. His spirit, easy nature, and good humor will be missed by family, friends, and acquaintances near and far who knew him well.

Born in Durham in 1925 to Dr. Walter Person Hardee and Florence Rose Hardee, he was baby brother to older sisters Roberta and Margaret (both deceased) and nephew to a long list of Hardee uncles and aunts. Consigned some summers to his grandparents’ country homestead in Stem, the story goes, he wandered barefoot, helped with farm chores, and snacked on the ever-present sweet potatoes from the warming oven.

Walter attended Durham High School, played church league basketball, and drove his dad around town to make house calls. His college career was sidetracked by World War II, during which he attended West Point for one year and courted Ethel “Penny” Rothen of Bloomfield, NJ. With the War over, Walter, nicknamed “Moon” for his service haircut, matriculated to his hometown’s Duke University, married Penny in 1947, started a family, earned a degree in civil engineering, and then went on to grad school at Columbia in NYC. First jobs took him to Bluff City (TN), Houston (TX), Philadelphia (PA), and Baltimore (MD) where, now a family of four boys (Philip, Chris, Eric, and Jonathan), they settled at Three Streams in Cockeysville, MD for 18 years. Additional moves for work took them to Hudson, OH and then back to Ruxton, MD where they settled in for a long period. With children fledged, there was now much travel to touch base with the growing family. In 2006, Moon and Penny looked for a retirement home near one of their children and moved south to Springmoor in Raleigh.

A North Carolinian at heart, with Duke blue running through his veins, Walter relished his return to the Old North State and immediately got to work and play at Springmoor chairing the maintenance committee, growing veggies in the community garden, singing in the chorus, visiting with new friends at meals, playing gin rummy, learning the idiosyncratic slopes of the putting green, and polishing his croquet strategy. He didn’t like to lose and didn’t lose often, not even to the grandkids!

He always enjoyed calls, visits, emails, and the rare letters, from his far-flung boys, their spouses, and his grandchildren: Philip and Betty from Asheville (NC), Chris and Susan from W. Chesterfield (NH), Eric and Diane from Monroe (WA), and Jon and Pam from Pittsboro (NC), who served as extraordinary frontline caretakers for 13 years. Big Daddy (as he liked to be called) had eight sparkling grandchildren spread even wider: Rya, Burlington, VT; Sarah, Sacramento, CA; Jennifer, Sunnyvale, CA; April, Durham, NC; Duncan, Asheville NC; Toren, New Orleans, LA; Caitlin, Berlin, Germany; and Cooper, Somerville, MA. He also had three young great-grandchildren (Samuel, Maven, and Liliana) with another on the way. Over the years, family reunions, often raucous, always involved singing, picking, and Big Daddy’s lonesome harmonica. They were memorable, and we will miss him so!

Walter was pre-deceased by Penny in 2015. He is survived by all of his children, their spouses, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren, as well as other extended family.

His ashes will be interred at Maplewood Cemetery in Durham in the Hardee family plot next to his wife of 68 years, surrounded by many other relatives.

A family memorial service will be scheduled for a time in the future when travel and gatherings are easier and safer.

If you would like to remember Moon, he and Penny always donated to the Springmoor Endowment Fund for those residents whose finances were exhausted (For information: Springmoor 1500 Sawmill Rd, Raleigh NC 27615)

To send him off, we share a family toast, a “Moonism,” that was always a hit, despite the rolled eyes:

“Here’s to it and let’s do it, and let’s do it again.

If we don’t get to it to do it, we’ll never get to it to do it again.”

Arrangements by Brown-Wynne, 300 Saint Mary's Street, Raleigh.