Judith L. Hardes

If you are reading this, you are now aware I’ve shuffled off to somewhere and the following is my authorized obituary. Upon re-reading, it seems to be somewhat self-aggrandizing. But I guess that’s what obituaries are supposed to be. So here goes…

Judith Hardes was born in Port Huron, Michigan on June 9, 1930, to C.J. and Virginia Schuberth Kreinbring. Her mother remarried five years later, and she was adopted by her stepfather, Anthony Luchek. She transitioned on June 25, 2024. She attended schools in Michigan, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Virginia, and England before returning to Michigan and graduating from Ann Arbor High School in 1948. She received her Bachelor of Arts degree from The Pennsylvania State University where she was a member of Delta Zeta sorority. She married Theron A. Hardes in Philadelphia in 1952 and they moved to Arizona in 1960 after he earned his Fine Arts degree in conjunction with The University of Pennsylvania and The Philadelphia Academy of the Fine Arts and completed his military service in Germany.

Enjoying theater, she regularly attended performances of and supported The Phoenix Theatre Company (where she served on the Board of Directors and has a theatre named for her on its campus, TheaterWorks, the Prescott Center for the Arts, and the Arizona Theatre Company. She was presented with The Phoenix Theatre Company’s Angel of the Art award in 2014, the Governor’s Philanthropist of the year award in 2018 and the AriZoni Max McQueen Distinguished Service award in 2017. She was a life friend of the Prescott Center for the Arts, Presidents’ Club member of the Yavapai College Performing Arts Center, a Circles member of the Phoenix Art Museum, a recipient of the 2020 Outstanding Supporter of the Arizona Humanities Council and supporter of KAET-TV and KBAQ-FM. Active in the Democratic Party, she was elected secretary and treasurer of both the Arizona state and Maricopa County organizations, was state party sergeant-at-arms and credentials chair for a number of years, voted a District Chair of the Year and named a member of the Democratic Hall of Fame. She was a past president of the Arizona Federation of Democratic Women, an officer of the National Federation of Democratic Women and elected a delegate to the National Democratic Convention in 1984. She was an at-large delegate at the International Women’s Year Conference in Houston in 1977. She also served as an officer of the Arizona Women’s Political Caucus and the Phoenix branch of the American Association of University Women. Ms. Hardes established an ongoing fund in her name in the Women’s Studies Program in the College of Liberal Arts at Penn State and was a recipient of the Pennsylvania State University Library’s 2017 Donor Recognition Award. She also funds a scholarship program at Alice Lloyd College in Kentucky and supports the Delta Zeta and American Association of University Women scholarship programs. In 2020 she was honored by one of the Phoenix Pan-Hellenic’s Woman of Impact awards representing her sorority. In what she sometimes referred as her “other life,” she was president of the South Phoenix Festival of Arts and wrote a weekly column and random feature articles for the South Mountain Star.

A tent and sleeping bag camper when younger, she determined later in life that “roughing it” was anything less than a four-star hotel without room service and a seat in the front of an airplane was by far more comfortable than in the back. She liked shrimp, sparkling wine and chocolate, live theater, British mysteries on the telly and good friends and conversation. She liked to travel, perhaps not the time and discomfort of getting there, but seeing new places, enjoying the people, their cultures and their lifestyles and cuisines. Bali was one of her favorite countries and she always looked forward to London and its museums and theater life.

Ms. Hardes was preceded in death by her husband, Theron Hardes, and her parents Virginia and Anthony Luchek, formerly of Prescott, Arizona. She will be interred in the Veterans’ Memorial Cemetery in Phoenix. Donations may be directed to a charity of choice or to any of the theaters named above.

Now go give somebody a hug.