The Family Website for
Ruth / Hal / Alison / Erika Hart
(aka Hart-Site.net) |
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...IS
ALWAYS EVOLVING, (someday more info
on Ruth & Hal will show up, esp.
given that intended early-2005
retirement did actually happen :-)
For now, keep up on
the life & times of the Harts (married 50
years as of August 21, 2019), esp.
their first 9.5 years after RETIREMENT in 2005,
via our 2014 Holiday Letter
(also
see 2012's,
2011's, 2010's, 2009's,
2008's,
2007's,
2006's
& 2005's
& 2004's
& 2002's)
Or, laugh
at some of Hal's "Top-10 TRW Memories"
from their 2005 retirement party
-- Click
Here
For
a webpage celebrating the life of
Vivian Hart (Hal's mother)
-- Click
Here
Ruth's mother Helen passed in
2015, at age 94.
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St. Hart's Day LII
(52) is Saturday, Feb. 15, 2020.
Our annual get-together with friends
& neighbors for pizza &
beer/soda (BYO wine), music, catching
up, ... (oh yes , Grunion
Poker too)
-- Sorry, no
heated pool this year.
Unfortunately, we can not always
guarantee the
most-wonderful-weather-in-44-years
but odds are it won't rain.
(And, we have a patio heater which
might still work.) Always the
Saturday nearest Feb. 14 — 44 years in
California! Click
graphic at left for your 2020
invitation.
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37-Year
old Alison graduated
with a degree in Biology from Washington
University in St. Louis in 2004 and
pursued a Masters in Public
Policy at Brown. She moved
into her old "suite" at home in 2010,
and volunteered at Habitat for
Humanity of Greater Los Angeles until
gaining employment. Alison was
hired by Habitat in October, 2011.
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40-Year
old
Erika
graduated from Brown in 2001
with a B.S. in Computer Science and as
uncrowned campus lawn-wrestling
champion . She worked at
start-up Tazz Networks in Providence,
where she still resides. Visit her
"celebrity" webpage by clicking here. |
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Immediately upon
retirement, we joined Omnilore —
a South-Bay-based Learning-in-Retirement
organization. The neat thing
about Omnilore is that it's almost
completely self-organized &
self-taught by the retiree members.
Everyone has to prepare & give a
presentation at one of the bi-monthly
class sessions over our 4-month
trimesters, sometimes lead discussion of a
chapter of a common reading, and always be
prepared for vigorous intellectual
discussion. Ruth got drafted onto
the Omnilore Board and the Curriculum
Committee and was elected President of
Omnilore in only her 4th year and served 2
one-year terms, Hal co-organizes the
recurring Shakespeare class and is
co-webmaster & co-Equipment Manager,
and both lend techie support — not that
many of these lively, wired seniors need
much help. The sketches of Ruth & Hal
at the top of this webpage are by
retired sketch artist Bernie Sills, done
as part of his presentation in a recent
Omnilore class on "Political
Cartoons."
Visit
the Omnilore website by clicking on the
owl at left. If this
interests you, a nationwide network of such
organizations is the Osher Lifelong Learning
Institutes; or, Google "learning in
retirement."
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MEMORIES:
Boris & Natasha (at left) became
parents Feb.24, 1999. Here's a photo memory of
when they had those 6 growing kitties (only Baby took up permanent residence) and their
then house-mates. 2017's
roster includes 2009-rescued Panu
(a Siamese), guessed to now
be 13 or 14 years old, Alison's twoTuxedo-Cat
boys cats, Drew
(about 16) and S'more (age 10),
plus newcomer Pearl (a
young female Siamese rescued from a feral
cat colony in 2013). We are their servants.
[Baby,
eventually diagnosed with her mother
Natasha's fatal kidney disease,
was taken just before her 10th birthday
in late 2008. Boris
and Fluffy passed on to Cat
Heaven in 2012.)
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Habitat for Humanity
(building houses for qualifying low-income
families) is worth checking out; click at
left. Hal worked about 25 days in
2004 and only slight more in 2005, his
first year of retirement, but upped it to
40 days in 2006. 2007 was busier (close to
100 days or partial days), as we
hosted the annual Jimmy Carter Work
Project (JCWP'07) Oct.28-Nov.2, building
30 housing units; Hal headed the Safety
Committee, which was a novel &
interesting experience. May, 2008,
was probably the pinnacle of his Habitat
career, travelling to New Orleans with 6
fellow LA volunteers and blitz building a
house in the 9th Ward from foundation to
almost ready-to-move-in in 5 days flat (impossible
in Los Angeles), under the house
leadership of former Habitat LA AmeriCrop
Jennie Dunn (then on New Orleands Habitat
staff and rising fast).
Hal's 2002 metal replacement knee only
lasted 6 and a fraction years (it wobbles),
so he put himself on the Habitat DL most
of 2009, but got back on tall ladders,
scaffolds, and roof a few months after
knee "revision" surgery performed for
March, 2010. He now mainly
focuses on safety duties and helps teach
our Cornerstone training class for new
volunteers, but still loves an occasional
day of crew-leading. Also, visit our local
Greater Los Angeles Habitat affiliate by
clicking here to find out what help they
need right now;
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Grunion'77
was Hal's TRW slow-pitch softball team that
played in TRW's intramural slow-pitch
softball league from 1977 to 2013. We
won our last "B" league championship in our
31st year (& 54th season, counting
winters) in 2007, after which we were "exiled"
to the "A" league, almost making the
championship game in 2009. 4 original
team members (Walt,
Steve,Ben, Hal) were still playing as
recently as 2011 -- guess what, we 4 average way
over 60 years of age now. Youngster Ben
kept playing as Hal, Steve, & Walt faded
away. "New" recruits included 2 more
who hit 30 years with the team (one while still
under 50), but also a bunch of newbies under
35. As we bounced
between the "B" and "A" leagues for a
third of a century, always in the "B" league
playoffs, we won more than our share of
championships (& the "C" league trophy
in '77). (2008,
2007, 2006, 2005, 2004, &
2003 final stats available by clicking at
left.) Hal's designated successor at team
captain kept Grunion'77 together for years, but
it finally passed into history in 2014.
:-(
Hal's
needed March 2010 knee-revision surgery (see
Habitat above) should have been his
softball-career-ending. BUT — after
playing one game in April of 2011, when he went
2-for-2 plus a walk, he did officially
retire. He had hits for the Grunion in 5
consecutive decades (as did Walt and Ben).
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Hal was
into the Ada programming
language
most of his working career. Visit the
website of ACM's Special Interest Group on
Ada, of which he is Past Past Past
Chair. Hal's participation waned in
retirement (but
not his passion about Ada's benefits).
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