Mrs. Fay Hart Dies Suddenly
Mrs. Fay Hart, wife of Irving Harlow Hart, director of the Extension Division at the College, died suddenly at her home in Cedar Falls, on the evening of May 20, 1932, following an illness of only one day. Although Mrs. Hart had been in failing health for the past three years, her condition had not become serious until immediately before her death.
Funeral services were read on Monday, May 23, 1932, at the First Presbyterian Church in Cedar Falls. The Reverend Henry Park, of Janesville, Wisconsin, assisted by the Reverend Bruce Giffin of the local church, conducted the services. Interment was in Fairview Cemetery, Cedar Falls.
Surviving, besides her husband, are four children, Mrs. John Bennett (Elizabeth Hart), Pri. '22, Chicago, Illinois; Mrs. Frank Zink (Mary L. Hart), B. A. '23, Manhattan, Kansas; Irving H. Hart, Jr., former Teachers College student, who will be graduated this summer from the University of Texas, at San Antonio, Texas, and Evan, who is a member of the junior class at Teachers College.
Mrs. Hart was for several years connected with the teaching staff in the Art Department of the College. She was well known as an authority on Indian culture and gave many lectures on the subject. She is remembered by her friends and many graduates of the college who knew her as a woman who always put others before self. Even when in failing health, she refused to give up and continued her work, going out of her way in showing kindness to others.
An appreciation in memory of Mrs. Hart, written by Fred D. Cram, B. A. '09, extension professor of rural education, appears below.
AN APPRECIATION
Genuineness--in this one word is summed up the briefest possible description of Ida Fay Pew Hart. Were another descriptive term to be added, it should be thoroughness. She was genuine, and she was thorough.
I talked with her a month before her untimely passing--a three hour conversation on the road to Iowa City. Here was a woman of mature years, of an age when many think of rest. She outlined her plans for larger service. In the midst of a mental pilgrimage to the hopes of a lifetime, the hope of a truthful contribution concerning Indian life and lore, Mrs. Hart, seeing a striking roadside view, would remark on it. Nothing artificial, little of man's making, attracted her attention The elaborate farm house by the side of the road she did not even see. The clump of pussy willows by the rippling waters nodded to her, and not in vain. Here was genuineness, the touch of the hand of God; there was artificiality, just another man's dwelling house.
So genuine and so thorough was Mrs. Hart that a minor error in an announcement concerning a bit of her work caused her worry and pain. "It is not true--" and because it was not true it was short of her ideal. In facing the ordeal of the hospital clinic, she revealed that same devotion to honesty. She must know the truth--her whole thought was of thoroughness, whatever the test might reveal. When she was asked why she did not stop for a moment's rest from the demands upon herself, she had the ready answer "The moment I voluntarily remain in bed is the morning of the end."
And to the husband, called to her bedside as she died, called by the boy whose loving hands had ministered to her in that last precious moment--to man and boy it is known that the two days' withdrawal was not a voluntary one. She died as she had lived, her thoughts infinitely high.
Visit her garden, a transplanted bit of Nature's prairie and woodland, you will find no single false note in the plot. Here the birds sing as they do in the woodlands and amid the grasses. Here again is revealed her genuineness and her thoroughness. Her neighbors, her friends, and her family will ever see here in time to come the beautiful fruits of devotion to loyalty and truth. In the recurring song of a bird that misses the presence of the designer of each delightful refuge; in sweet gurgles of soft waters whispering a wonder at her absence and a welcome to the wayfaring; in each quaint bow of stately bush, or timid and modest nod of a prairie flower; we see and hear the spiritual overglow and overtone of a life well lived, genuine, thorough; a life which left its impress on us all, and in future years will sustain us in its pure revelation of wifeliness, motherhood, and friendship in the most sublime degree.
Through the gate to the greater gardens opened to receive her spirit, there streams a light, stretching beneficent beams through the infinite reach of time.
Fred D. Cram
Edited from an article in the Alumnus, July 1932, pages 13-14.