Gary Louis Heard

Gary was born in Hartford, Connecticut in 1948, to Louis Heard and Helen Carroll Heard (later Wetherbee). Gary grew up in nearby Manchester, Connecticut and attended local schools and Manchester High School, from which he graduated in 1966. He received his Bachelor of Arts degree in Business Administration in 1970, from Upsala College in East Orange, New Jersey. Later in life, while working full time as an insurance underwriter, Gary’s intense personal interest in European politics led him to earn a Masters degree in Political Science from New York University.

Throughout his high school and college years Gary worked harvesting tobacco, as a summer camp counselor, and as a roofer, with one memorable summer spent roofing a huge manufacturing building at Pratt & Whitney Aircraft in East Hartford.

After earning his bachelor’s degree, Gary went to work at Chubb Insurance, completing their underwriting training program and going on to a 39-year, highly successful career at Chubb in a wide variety of roles. After retiring from Chubb in 2009, Gary spent a year working for a boutique insurance firm building its wholesale environmental brokerage from the ground up. Then he was recruited by a former Chubb colleague to work at Travelers Insurance in its Entertainment Insurance Division, which he did for three years before retiring again.

In 2017, another former colleague asked Gary to join the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey as Chief of Staff to the Chairman. After one year in that role, Gary again retired from full-time employment. This third retirement stuck, but since then Gary has worked as an election poll worker and, most recently and until the time of his death, as a coach for the New York Road Runners’ group training sessions in Prospect Park, Brooklyn. He has also delved extensively into genealogy, writing two book-length research reports about the two sides of his family.

An avid lifelong athlete, Gary played baseball from little league through college and onward, until he retired from the Chubb corporate softball team in his late 60s. He was also a skilled and devoted golfer, having taken several long group golf trips to Earth’s great golfing destinations and sought out new courses wherever he traveled. At the time of his death he was a member of Great Neck Country Club in Waterford, Connecticut, where he could often be found playing with their Friday afternoon and Sunday morning groups.

Gary enjoyed his greatest athletic success through long-distance running, for which he had both a natural gift and diligent adherence to training schedules. He completed 19 marathons (including four Bostons), eight Hood to Coast Relays, and numerous shorter races, often winning awards. Gary completed his last race, the Al Goldstein Series 5k, two weeks before his death, in a time of 29:29, placing first among men aged 70-74.

Gary leaves behind his wife of 21 years, Sara; two daughters, Marjorie Heard of Brooklyn and Beth Provo (and her husband Kahlil) of Olympia, Washington; two grandchildren, Rosalia Provo and Mateo Provo; his brother Peter Heard (and wife Beth) of Manchester, Connecticut; several nieces and nephews and countless heartbroken friends met through childhood, work, sports and his active membership in the Lutheran Church. He was predeceased by his sister, Laurie Heard Berg, as well as his parents