David Walter Hardy of Cold Spring, New York, passed away on July 16, 2025, at the Kaplan Family Hospice House in Danvers, Massachusetts, following a heroic eight-year struggle with Alzheimer’s Disease. He was surrounded by the love of his wife, sons and close friends in his final days. He was 76 years old.

David Hardy
David Hardy

Born in 1948 in Atlanta, Georgia, the first of three children, to Ann Foster Hardy and Robert Charles Hardy, David spent most of his childhood in Memphis, Tennessee, and attended high school in Little Rock, Arkansas. In college at Southwestern at Memphis (now Rhodes College), he studied philosophy and theater, graduating with honors in Philosophy. Immediately after college, he served as a conscientious objector to the Vietnam War at Arlington Developmental Center, where he worked with severely developmentally disabled teenage boys. His work at Arlington informed much of his later artistic and educational activities and inspired a play performed in New York.

David was a talented theater artist, writer, craftsman and educator, who brought a singular and artful eye to everything he did.

His work in theater started in high school when, to his family’s astonishment, he landed the lead role in the school play during his senior year. He later performed in summer stock and dinner theater productions. At Southwestern, he studied under Ray Hill, performing in several plays by Samuel Becket. With fellow Hill students, including the performer Ellen McElduff who was to become his first wife, he co-founded the Eads Hill theater company, which was supported by Ellen Stewart of LaMama Experimental Theater Club. His play A Full Eight Hours, inspired by his experience at Arlington, was performed at LaMama in 1972.

David, along with other members of Eads Hill, moved to New York City in the 1970s and became closely involved with the experimental theater group Mabou Mines. There David made substantial contributions over the years as a performer and designer while working on imaginative writing and film projects of his own. It was within this creative circle that he met Stephanie Rudolph. David and Stephanie married in 1990 and eventually moved to the Hudson Valley where they raised their two sons, Forrest and Spencer.

David’s talents as a craftsman were evident in his work as a carpenter, which he did to support himself during his time in New York, but they were most beautifully realized in his work on wooden boats. While living in a tiny apartment on New York’s Lower East Side, he decided to build a 14-foot wooden canoe yawl based on the blueprint of boat designer Albert Strange, which he had discovered buried in the files at Mystic Seaport in Connecticut. He lofted Strange’s design in that tiny apartment, then constructed the vessel in a basement on Christopher Street, under the offices of a design/build company that he was working for at the time. He knew full well that the boat wouldn’t fit out the door when it was finished but managed to birth it out of its underground womb by removing the building’s door frames. Wooden Boat Magazine published his account of that experience in 1990.

David’s passion for boating and for working with young people continued in the Hudson Valley when he took over leadership of the nonprofit, Building Bridges Building Boats (BBBB), from Trevor Harris. There he organized summer boat-building workshops for families, ran a river camp along the Hudson River, and organized rowing expeditions for teens that began in Albany and concluded in upper Manhattan. His young adult novel, Not Just a River, inspired by these journeys, was published by friends and distributed to interested members of the community.

David brought the same enthusiasm he showed for theater, writing, and boating to his career as an educator. After moving to the Hudson Valley, David became a technology teacher at North Rockland High School where he taught Computer Aided Design (CAD), Architecture, and Engineering, among other classes. He pushed forward the curriculum by creating programs that would engage the students in hands-on ways: they built and sailed an ice boat and an 18-foot Sharpie sailboat, and designed and launched medieval trebuchets, to name a few.

David was a devoted father, teaching his sons to explore the world with open minds. Summers meant river camping, sailing, and building boats; winters were for ice boating and snowboarding. He was deeply proud of Forrest’s journey to becoming a professional captain, sailing instructor, and co-founder of First Reef Sailing in Boston. He equally admired Spencer’s path — his work with Alzheimer’s organizations during David’s illness, his determination and persistence, and his quick wit. With Stephanie, he built a life of creativity and adventure. Their homes in Cold Spring, one on Barrett Pond and one next to the Nelsonville Woods, were full of Stephanie’s art, the paintings of friends, and his craft projects. He and Stephanie traveled to Japan with the theatre and ventured to Alaska and Tanzania with their sons.

David and Stephanie entertained friends often. David built a deck on their Barrett Pond house where they hosted dinners, and where, to usher in the new century on New Year’s Eve of 2000, David organized a group of friends to build a sailboat out of leftover construction and found materials, load it with items they wanted to leave behind, lit it afire, and sent it into the pond for a “Viking Funeral.” David hiked frequently with friends on mountain trails around Cold Spring, most often one up Bull Hill that took them up to an impressive view of the Hudson River, where they spent many hours parsing the finer points of life. He served his community as a member of the Haldane School Foundation and the Philipstown Planning Board. David was well known in the village of Cold Spring and, when he lost the ability to hike, he loved to walk down to Main Street and visit the Cold Spring Coffee House.

David was not only a dedicated father and husband, he was a loyal friend with boundless energy and a sense of humor as strong as his will. He is survived by his wife Stephanie Rudolph, their son Jacob “Forrest” Hardy and his wife Teighlor, and their son Spencer Robert Hardy; his brother John Christopher Hardy and his wife Elisabeth; his sister Cynthia Ann Hardy and her partner Tom Klash; and, among many loving friends, Dale Worsley, who helped care for him throughout his Alzheimer’s journey.

A website has been created at davidwhardy.com to share remembrances, stories and photos, as well as information on making donations in David’s honor. A gathering to celebrate David’s life is being planned.

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