This story was updated at 6:10 p.m., Saturday, Jan. 7, 2023.
Joseph Hardy of 84 Lumber fame has been described as Homeric, a lumber baron and even chairman of the boards.
He long acknowledged that he was driven to succeed as a founder of the billion-dollar 84 Lumber empire based in Washington County — the largest privately owned home improvement retailer in the United States and third overall behind Home Depot and Lowe’s.
He’s credited with rethinking the lumber business in the late 1950s with a cash-and-carry approach focused on professional contractors and builders, then proceeded to dictate over company growth that at one point included more than 500 stores in 38 states, placing him and eventually his daughter Maggie Hardy on the Forbes 400 list of the world’s richest people.
By 2002, Ms. Hardy was included on that list, with an estimated wealth approaching $1 billion, at a time when 84 Lumber revenues had reached $2 billion a year. Mr. Hardy’s wealth has been reported as high as $1.2 billion.
Neither is currently on the list.
Mr. Hardy turned 100 on Saturday and died on his birthday.
"It is with heavy hearts that we announce the passing of Joseph A. Hardy, III. The Hardy family lost their patriarch and all-around great man," his family said in a statement Saturday. "Joe proved that nothing is impossible by willing himself to his 100th birthday. His family is beyond proud of him for making this final accomplishment."
Mr. Hardy was an intense character, a 2-by-4 among toothpicks. As a child, Ms. Hardy, who now runs the company and their Nemacolin resort in Fayette County, recalled going to work with her father and opening his office door to see him “standing on his chair, screaming and hurling clumps of papers at a bewildered lawyer.”
And, yet, he once told a reporter, “The only guy I need to keep whipping is myself,” and, “I really am tough on myself but that’s the way it has to be.”
Mr. Hardy also readily confessed that he “always wanted to be a big shot,” and long had accomplished that goal when he said, “It’s a bunch of crap to think I was some sort of visionary.” And as he aged he began evaluating his success and pursuit of happiness: “As you get older, before you cash in, you wonder — lumber. It’s pretty good. But is that all there is?”
He didn’t leave that question unanswered as he emerged as a media star, always with a memorable common-guy perspective on life. In time he realized that life was more than lumber, getting into the harness-racing business and operating the Meadows Racetrack in North Strabane, Washington County. He also showed a yen for extravagances with the development of Nemacolin Woodlands Resort & Spa, now known as just Nemacolin.
And his late-life transformation into a bon vivant, elderly playboy and avant garde promoter of unapologetic extravagances — that’s to say, parties, young women, marriages and divorces, and song — drew media and public attention.
“I get a kick out of life,” he once said. “I really, really do.”
His father co-owned and operated Hardy & Hayes, a former jewelry shop in Downtown that has been described as the Tiffany’s of Pittsburgh.
The oldest of three sons, Mr. Hardy attended Mt. Lebanon High School, Shady Side Academy and Lehigh University. During his last year at Lehigh, he enlisted in the Army Air Corps and served as a radioman in the South Pacific.
In 1946 he began working in his father’s jewelry store, also peddling vegetables door to door while earning an industrial engineering degree at the University of Pittsburgh.
He left the jewelry business after his uncle took him to the Duquesne Club, Downtown, to scold him for selling jewelry too aggressively, making a beloved older employee jealous.
Soon after, Mr. Hardy launched the Green Hills Lumber Co. in Upper St. Clair with his childhood friend, Ed Ryan, whose father built Ryan Homes. It was tough going early on as they sold bags of plaster to subcontractors at a profit of a nickel a bag while making deliveries sometimes at midnight.
Then with Mr. Ryan and Mr. Hardy’s brothers Norman and Robert as partners, he expanded into real estate and opened a second Green Hills store in the village of Library. The company reported $2.5 million in sales after only two years.
With early business success, Mr. Hardy took a trek to Washington County in 1957 to find a site with a railroad siding where the partners could construct a factory to build prefabricated homes. He found the perfect site in an area of North Strabane known as Eighty Four. He liked the name. He told the farmer there he wanted to buy it.
“‘You don’t have the kind of money to buy this property,’ the farmer told him, Mr. Hardy once explained. “I told him to go ahead and name his price. He asked for $5,000 — I guess that was the highest number he could think of — and I said, ’Sold.’ ”
While the facility was being built, Mr. Hardy heard from a friend about a successful cash-and-carry lumber operation in Ohio and decided, instead, to turn the building into 84 Lumber. Business grew steadily for the next half century to become the third largest home improvement chain in the United States, with a no-frills approach that included retail space in unheated warehouses.
In 1991, the company reported $1.7 billion in revenue and continued expanding to more than 500 stores in 38 states until the 2007 recession, during which Maggie Hardy, as the new company president and major owner, reduced stores by half, to 250. In 2020, the company announced that it had hit a record $4 billion in annual sales and was expanding to new markets.
For 75 years, Mr. Hardy would begin every day, whether at home or on vacation, calling 84 Lumber’s top 70 revenue-generating stores from the day before. He would tell whoever picked up the phone that they were doing a good job and to keep up the good work, starting the calls around 8 a.m. and continuing for about an hour.
In 2017, he founded a new company, Hardy World, focusing on real estate development in urban infill and industrial properties. It has developed more than 400,000 square feet of space including warehouses, retail, restaurants and office space.
With three decades of success in 1987, Mr. Hardy bought 2,000 acres near Farmington, Fayette County, in an auction. There, he developed the high-end Nemacolin resort. It includes two golf courses, a driving range, tennis courts, a zoo, a ski area and upscale suites, a four-diamond hotel, a five-star restaurant, bars and spas.
In 2011, Nemacolin obtained a casino license. It also features an art collection valued at $45 million and it’s own private airfield.
Mr. Hardy joked that the only thing the resort lacked was an ocean — “but we’re working on it.”
With residences in Boca Raton, Fla., and Manhattan’s Upper East Side, Mr. Hardy eventually would live at Nemacolin, with a readiness to feed reporters a dramatic, hell’s-afire quote, and often drawing attention with his bold lifestyle that included the purchase of Rolls Royces and Bentleys.
He also got press attention by buying himself a royal title in England as Lord of the Manor for Henley; the titles turned two daughters into a countess and baroness.
But he pulled away from tradition in more dramatic fashion when he took up with his secretary, Debra Maley, and divorced his wife, Dorothy, after 51 years of marriage and five children. He eventually married Ms. Maley when she was 26, and they had two daughters.
The divorce from Dorothy in 1997 became big news with jokes that Mrs. Hardy would get half his wealth, which would force Mr. Hardy to change the company name to 42 Lumber.
After divorce proceedings led to a settlement, Mrs. Hardy commented, “Any 74-year-old man who runs off with a 25-year-old is sick in the head. His ego got in the way. He’s pathetic,” adding that life with him had been “a pressure cooker.”
In the meantime, Mr. Hardy had begun investing more time and money developing Nemacolin, and his lifestyle became more public with a series of spectacular events and birthday parties.
When he turned 84 in 2007, he threw a huge birthday bash for himself at Nemacolin, with performances by Bette Midler, a young Christina Aguilera (who sang him “Happy Birthday”) and Robin Williams, as well as the touring company of Broadway’s “A Chorus Line.”
He invited 500 guests to the party, which kicked off at 2 p.m. and ended 12 hours later. Among the celebrity guests was “Lifestyles of the Rich & Famous” star Robin Leach, who wished Mr. Hardy congratulations on achieving all his champagne wishes and caviar dreams.
Kenny Rogers entertained at a previous birthday party.
Mr. Hardy succeeded in getting a PGA Tour event at his resort, starting in 2003 and running for four years, after a suggestion by Tiger Woods, who had played on the $18 million Mystic Rock Golf Course designed by Pete Dye in 1997.
He and Maggie Hardy paid for golfer John Daly’s alcohol rehabilitation and hired him and even had a bronze statue sculpted of him at the golf course.
“Joe was a true friend and an amazing person,” Mr. Daly said in a statement released by Mr. Hardy’s family. “He brought out the best in everyone and I’m so lucky I got to know him.”
His marriage to Ms. Maley lasted just a few years. Shortly after that divorce in 2007, Mr. Hardy married 22-year-old Kristin Georgi, a Nemacolin spa employee he met while she was doing his nails. He filed for divorce four months later.
Next, in 2009, he married Rebecca Davis, 51, of Deerfield Beach, Fla., then, very much under the radar, Mr. Hardy divorced again, and married Jodi Santella Williams several years ago.
Mr. Hardy also got into politics. In 2003, he was elected as a Fayette County commissioner, donating his $46,000 salary to a food bank while spending sizable sums of his own money on numerous developmental projects in Uniontown before frustration set in with the slow pace of government. He didn’t seek re-election.
He also is reported to have contributed millions over the years to colleges, hospitals and organizations. For example, when he visited the the Fayette County Historical Society farmhouse, which needed extensive restoration, he asked what was needed. He was told it needed new heating and cooling systems.
“Send me the estimates,” he responded.
Visitation for Mr. Hardy is from 6 to 8 p.m. Tuesday and from 2 to 4 p.m. and 6 to 8 p.m. Wednesday at Beinhauer Funeral Home, 2828 Washington Road, McMurray. A public funeral is set for 11 a.m. Thursday at Westminster Presbyterian Church, 2040 Washington Road, followed by full military honors. Interment will be private.
Non-family members are encouraged to make donations in his honor to Habitat for Humanity or The Pennsylvania Classic Foundation.
Surviving Mr. Hardy are his wife, Jodi; eight children: Joseph A. Hardy IV, of McMurray, Pa.; Paul Hardy of Bel Air, Md.; Robin Hardy Freed of Boca Raton, Fla.; Katherine Hardy Drake of Plain City, Ohio; Margaret Hardy of Belle Vernon; Paige Hardy Enriquez of Melbourne, Fla.; Taylor Hardy of Pittsburgh, PA.; and JJ Hardy of Farmington.
Also surviving him are three stepsons; Logan Williams of Uniontown, Lloyd Williams of Uniontown, and Austin Hardy of Farmington; and 15 grandchildren and 18 great-grandchildren.
Mr. Hardy had two brothers, Robert and Norman, both of whom are deceased. He also was preceded in death by his first wife, Dorothy.
First Published: January 7, 2023, 8:18 p.m.
Updated: January 7, 2023, 11:14 p.m.
