From the Chicago Tribune:

James Hardee Obituary

James Dunwoody Hardee, Jr. (Jim) passed away August 30, 2023, after a long illness. He was born in Illinois at Evanston Hospital to Marian (Petie) née Petersen of Kenilworth, IL and James Dunwoody Hardee, Sr (Jim) of Toledo, OH. Jim, Jr. grew up attending Winnetka, IL schools: Crow Island, Skokie, and New Trier East High School (NTE) where he played on the championship varsity football team and sang in the boys' ensemble. Jim then attended Deerfield Academy for a year before attending Bowdoin College in Brunswick, Maine. Jim had an interest in political science and studied for a semester at American University in Washington, DC. Back at Bowdoin his senior paper was on Prison Guard Reform which was published locally after his graduation. He graduated with high honors in Sociology (Class of 1979). Returning to Illinois after graduating from Bowdoin College, Jim received his MBA from the Kellogg Graduate School of Management at Northwestern University. After working at Swiss Bank, Jim became an entrepreneur. He started a pet insurance business, and later Hardee Enterprises selling security cameras and mirrors to companies nationally. In December 1996, Jim married Helen Ahern, and in December 1997, they had their daughter, Heather, his pride and joy. Heather became the third generation of the family to graduate from New Trier High School. Like Jim, Heather attended American University. After her fall semester in 2019 studying Brexit and International Government at the University of Edinburgh, Scotland, Jim and Heather took a memorable trip together exploring the country and the family's Scottish heritage. Jim's hobbies included his love of music, fishing, and travel. After college, Dr. William Peterman invited him to join the Apollo Chorus of Chicago where he sang for over 20 years, especially enjoying the Christmas concerts of Handel's "Messiah". Many of his vacations included traveling to lakes and oceans where he could fish, including annual family sports fishing trips to Key West. He travelled to Japan and Costa Rica on Insight Trips with Opportunity International, later joining the Board. He was a member of the Wilmette Rotary Club, serving as president from 2015-2016 before retiring to Florida. Moving to Bradenton, FL in 2019, Jim barely got settled when COVID hit. Due to several health challenges during the pandemic, he feared going out to get the medical care that he needed. After a long illness, Jim went to be with his Lord and Redeemer on the morning of the Super Blue Moon -- a fitting send-off. Jim was predeceased by his parents and leaves behind his daughter Heather Hardee, his sisters Ruth Hardee Kovacs and Mary Hardee Tabb (Waller), nieces, a nephew, and cousins. A memorial service will be planned at a later date for close family only. In lieu of flowers, please consider a gift to support the James D. Hardee, Jr. '79 Scholarship Fund. This gift will provide financial aid for Bowdoin students in memory of James D. Hardee, Jr. '79. Your gift will impact the experience of a current student and celebrate James's life, and we are grateful. https://www.bowdoin.edu/alumni-families/give/tribute/hardee.html Condolences may be sent to the family at www.heathfuneralchapel.com.

I always saw Dave as a guy who truly, truly, marched to the beat of his own drummer.  I also saw something else: I guy whom people from all spectrums liked, and wanted to know.  We all had our own crowd and type, be it an academic-ish crowd, athletic, performing arts, tough-guy wanna be's, you name it.  And I swear, people from so many crowds wanted Dave as a friend.  In one class that I shared with him, he related that he had recently entered some weekend party of our class (you know, where we'd leave the poor parents' home utterly trashed), and he found that so many people were yelling out "Sweitzer! Sweitzer!" as he came in that he just felt that he had to get out of there, so intense was this, and he did so.  However, all they were doing was returning the entirely genuine, warm smile and wave of Dave's hand that they had received from him in the hallways all the time.  Well, that tells you about his near universal likability, his warmth,and the big- time charisma he exuded. It is my feeling that many people felt like they were a friend of Dave's, no matter what crowd they came from, from the clean cut, to the stoners.  Not many folks are warm enough achieve that, in my view.

He and the faculty/administration didn't see eye to eye well as the NTE years passed on (as he once confided to me at a bar stool at Suel's in Northfield, perhaps 15 years ago or so)...but that was just Sweitzer: his own drummer.

Rest easy my friend, and know that we all will miss you.  You had a smile for everyone.

Yours, 

Joe Goldman

There are good friends, and some great friends, from childhood and our high school years.  And then, if we are lucky, there are those five or so who were not only great friends, but were actually part of shaping us, part of our mentality today, and part of our development.  That was Pete to me. He lived but one block from me, and I could not possibly list all the great times we shared, both as schoolboys and as high schoolers.  I cannot count the number of times I was in his home...and probably vice versa.  

He was true blue in every sense of the word.  We also were very different in many ways.  No question about it, Pete had a reckless element to his personality, even in boyhood, let alone during NTE.  Because of this, I experienced stuff a little wilder than I would have otherwise, coming from the straight-laced home I was in.  Thus, Pete exposed me to other ways of living.  And as for sheer good times and laughs.....I think no one else on this very small list of mine gave me so many.  Pete....take it light up in the great gig in the sky.....and we'll pick up right where we left off when I get there.  Know that I was just crushed when I heard that you met your maker.  What a loss to know that I no longer have one of my key guys from my upbringing.  It kills me to write this eulogy Pete.  Love you, my man.  Always did.

Dear Scott:

Rock on! Joey here. I loved seeing that you have founded not one but two biotech companies. May they flourish, and of course also alleviate suffering.

Scott, I have the warmest memories of our friendship, particularly during our North School days, pall-ing around, and being at your home. God, your dad was the goods, being our baseball coach. To this day I remember getting the 8 X 10 headshots of Don Rickles, with his inscription, "YOU GUYS BETTER WIN!" I promptly lost it. This is particularly irksome to me, as I have long been a fan of American comedy, and Don Rickles certainly is in the constellation of the greats of the years 1950-1980. And your dad was such a nice guy.

I send you my very best Scott.

Yours,

Joe
(Of course, "Joey" to you....and to 99% of the other Glencoe gang. No matter how many reunions I attend, no matter how many phone calls I have, their usage of "Joey" is utterly indelible. At this point, I find it cute.

Franker......I still remember the booming sound of all of us in the gym chanting "Franker, Franker"  as he worked his very competent magic on the b'ball court, and us cheering him on.  An entirely unassuming guy, but what an asset.  Frank, you went too soon.  RIP good buddy.

Peter's house and mine were a stone's throw from each other.  Thus, we saw each other about 18 zillion times growing up and I was often in his home.  I knew his siblings and parents reasonably well.

As I saw it while growing up, even by the age of around 12, Peter was the Mick Jagger of Glencoe, then of NTE.  As any of you who knew him know....he just had a certain allowable swagger, a totality of coolness, a rakishly bad-boy persona concealing an absolutely niice guy...and many other qualities.  But the coolness stood out to me.  Even as a kid, he was a rebel who marched to the beat of his own drummer...maybe it was the drummer behind Mick Jagger of the Roling Stones, Mr. Charlie Watts.  If it was doing something wrong or against normal childhood behavior, Jerry Braun, I, Peter Niefeld and other uncooperative personalities could easily count on Peter to screw off with us.  However, his contempt for square-ass, suburban, American morality stood out to me.  I'd say he had a little of the James Dean in him.  As many of your girls might recall, he was the heart throb of so many lasses.  This was due to the fact that he visibly inherited his mother's looks, and Mrs. Allen was a beauty by any standard.

To me, he reached stellar heights when he played bass guitar with Rob Milburn, Max Wiley, Mike Bodeen, etc. in that great rockabilly group they created, Buckin' Bob and the Bronco's.  God, could they belt out the tunes, and entertain us.  And to me, that was when my schoolboy friend Peter reached total Mick Jagger-ness, or Keith Richards-ness, if you will.   Peter had the cojones to light up a cigarette while performing in our big lunch room, and just like Keith Richards and countless other ultra cool rockers, and put the ignited cigarette into a spare space up where the tuning knobs were at the top of the guitar, during  his playing. Talk about f'n cool....to me, he was Keith Richars/Jagger incarnate.  With most people of that age, that act would have looked completely pretentious, not to mention grandstanding.  But having known Peter so long, I knew it wasn't grandstanding.  It was the real him....just cool and suave beyond compare.

Petger I regret terribly your early demise, I miss you of course, and cherish the many good times we shared right on our own block in north Glencoe.  You had a lovely family as well.

Chris and I got to know each other senior year.  Our gym lockers were right across from each other's, and we'd shoot the breeze a bit before and afer gym.  I just loved is very cerebral nature, and certainly a warm personality.  Really liked him.

There are many mesures of success in life, and career is but one of them.  And on that note, I would like to make clear just how high Chris rose in the advertising industry.  He was quiet literally amongst the top of the pack in the world's most important city for advertising, our own New York City.  His firm, Olgivy and Mather, is a giant and a top tier player.  To become Chief Creative Officer of a firm with such a golden roster of clients says it all.  He was an executive with enormous responsibilities.  He personally headed up one of the most prestigious ad accounts in the world: IBM.  To say that IBM not only has its pick of ad men to use, but is extremely demanding and choosy would be a fair statement.  And who did that corporate giant rely on for fifteen years?  NTE's very own Chris Wall.  Below are remarks from his firm.  Just look at the laundry list of giant, ultra-demanding  firms who turned to Chris for their work.  Way to go Chris!

In 1987, he was hired by BBDO Los Angeles, and helped craft award-winning advertising campaigns such as “What’s on Your Powerbook” for Apple. In the 1990s, Wall moved to Ogilvy and Mather, New York, when he served as Chief Creative Officer, leading creation of IBM’s worldwide advertising for 15 years.

Steve Hayden, retired Vice Chairman of Ogilvy and Mather Worldwide, and Wall’s long-term mentor and friend noted that, under Wall’s leadership, IBM’s brand value moved from #283 in to #3. Wall also created advertising campaigns for for UPS, Motorola, Kodak, Computer Discount Warehouse and, more recently, Cisco Systems.

George, that has got to be one of the most eloquent and superbly written eulogies I have ever read.  It hits with the force of a freight train.  Your writing skills are astounding.  Thanks for sharing all that.

Tom and I were in the same advisory.  I tell ya, that advisory was a hell of an institution.  No matter what crowd one was in, or was not in, when you see someone every morning for four years, in one way or another you get to know that person fairly well.  As far as I was concerned, Tom was easily in the "cool" crowd, and I was a nuthin'.

First of all, a notable achievement of Tom's: something caught fire in him at the University of Arkansas in the field of chemistry.  What did he do?  HE WENT AND EARNED A PH.D. IN CHEMISTRY.  You read that right: a doctoral degree.  He then worked in that field for a number of American corporations.

One reunion year, say the 20th or so, while relaxing after The Main Event at Dave Clark's folk's home over a bowl of weed, he mentioned to me that he didn't live on the North Shore until he started NTE.  Talk about being the new kid in an intimidatingly large school, Jeez Louise.  Most of us had our coterie of junior high friends on whom to lean on freshman and sophomore year or so, but not those who moved in freshman year.  But you'd never have known it with Tom: he was in the thick of it socially more or less from the word go, with that beaming smile of his and quite obviously, very healthy and solid self confidence.  I asked him how he did that and he explained that it was due to being from a family of seven children.  He said something to the effect of, "When your folks have their attention divided that many ways, you learn pretty well how to fend for yourself."   Man, was I touched, impressed, and inspired.  RIP, old buddy.

Hi Susie:

Needless to say, lovely to see you at the reunion. Wasn't that an extra hoot in that the facility was essentially in our old 'hood? Good old G-town. That added something very special for me that evening, particularly as I drove down Sycamore Lane, headed there. You could have stuck needless in me at that moment, and my elated mood would not have changed. I spent so much time on Sycamore itself, because my best friend Mitch Schwartz lived there...along with Steve Leavitt. It truly is memory lane for me, especially for those precious years between 5-7 years old, until we moved to Sunset Lane in North Glencoe. Driving down Sycamore that evening, 58 friggin' years after I was playing there....how sentimental and nostalgic could I get? TOTALLY!

I lost your email address and phone, and thus am sending this email through the NTE '74 website. When's good for brunch, my dear?

Wishing you all the best, and please reply by phone (preferable...a conversation with a friend during the dry business day is always such a welcome respite), or, as 99% OF THE HUMAN RACE DOES, EVEN WITH OLD FRIENDS, AND DEAR FRIENDS, a nice, cold email, electrons on a screen, will suffice, if you insist. Don't you just love the invariably warm and cuddly feeling you get from reading a brief set of words, made out of electricity, in emails?

Your curmudgeon friend,

Joe

Dearest Pam:

You and I struck up a friendship senior year. I think perhaps we had a class together. We interacted only on the school grounds, but I clearly remember doing so, as I liked your personality so much...and frankly, I clearly remember your good taste in clothes and god-given good looks! Maybe, just maybe, you recall who I am. However, I want to affirm that if you do not, NO WORRIES IN THE LEAST! I myself at this point have a hard enough time remembering where I put my car keys, so I'll hardly slight anyone who does not recall a passing school pal friendship during our NTE days. Email me directly at joegoldman2236@yahoo.com.

In any event, I wish you nothing but the best, and congratulate you on being retired...something I aspire to being each morning when the goddamned alarm goes off...

Sending the very best wishes,

Joe Goldman

Alex:

Great stuff.  You hit the nail on the head, with such poignancy.  God, not a single one of us from Glencoe can forget what a monumental shocker that news was.  Every cloud, ideally, has a silver lining, and as you said, maybe her terribly early passing had some good in it, with that Youth Center.

Like any guy with a pulse, I was awestruck by Sally's god-given great looks in high school.  A lot of good that did me.  As in so many other cases, I was petrified to iniitiate move one to get to know her, much less date her.  If  you women only know the angst we boys went through in the many lovely girls at NTE, only to be stymied by our own terrible inhibitions and timidity.

But as it is said, better late than never.  On Green Bay Rd. in Kenilworth during adulthood, I noticed her mother's interior design shop.  I called, and was easily put in touch with Sally.  To my shock, she remembered me with no trouble.  How she did this I'll never know, as we never said a word to each other at NTE, and from my own (arguably warped) conception, I was nearly a compete social non-entity at that high school.  This tends to happen when you do not sign up for a single extra-curricular in four years, and did not go out on a single date.  Yet still, my memories of NTE and appreciaton for having gone there are great.  I love driving down Winnetka Ave. to this day for the nostalgia of it alll, and to re-experience the pride I have in going to a school that displayed such awesome care for us, and was so peerless in its academic richness.

Sally and I  commenced a great friendship.  We'd have coffee after work, and shared numerous hilarious and rewarding phone conversations.  At 48 years old, she still looked like NTE's answer to Julianne Moore, and could have passed for 35.   But she couldn't have cared less.  She had a totally down to earth personality, unpretentious in every way, and was just a tremendous conversationalist.

How excruciating it was to learn of her passing not long ago.  Oh, the unpredictabilities of fate, and how random they are, taking these dear friends of ours, one after the other.  Sally raised two fine kids.  She of course is missed terribly by all who knew her, family and friends alike.  Sally, may you rest in peace.

I was best friends with Roger Roth from virtually the first week I met him, in third grade, until his most unfortunate early passing, during his late '40's, owing to a heart attack.

At our grammar school, North School of Glencoe, Roger was the definitive nice guy.  I say this not out of pure nostalgia.  Ask anyone from Glencoe, and they'll agree.  He had the most pleasant demeanor you could imagine.  How he managed to not have any sharp edges to his personality at such a young age I will never know.

He excelled at NTE, but in a most quiet way.  Wound up with a class rank of #81 out of our mammoth 913 person class, and hardly broke a sweat in achieving such marks.  By senior year, he was the photo editor of our school paper, The New Trier News.  Under his stewardship, the NT News won the award from the Associated Press for having the finest high school newspaper photography in the entire state.  Roger, of course, was the recipient of the award.  He told me about this once, and simply left it at that.  During adulthood, his love of art continued.  He painted wonderfully, kept up with photography, and enjoyed strumming the guitar.

I was in his home a million times growing up, and was treated by the Roth's as if I were family.  Some of you might know his older brother, Doug, NTE '73.  Gosh, such nice memories I have of both Roger and his family.  Roger got dealt a seriously bad hand in terms of his cardiac health, and those of us who knew him grieve to this day, I'm quite sure.  What  a guy.  Rog, I miss you terribly.