Zoe Hardy

Zoe Tracy Hardy died at St. John’s Living Center on Memorial Day, just a few days shy of her 91st birthday.

A Midwesterner, Zoe first saw the Jackson Hole area as a young adult in the early 1950s, enjoyed summer vacations with her family through the 1960s, was a summer guest at the Bar BC Ranch in the 1970s and 1980s, and finally was able to make Jackson her permanent home at Pioneer Homestead Apartments in the early 2000s.

Zoe was born in St. Petersburg, Florida, to James and Muriel (Bryson) Tracy. When the Great Depression hit the family returned to Iowa, where her father was a civil engineer for the Civilian Conservation Corps.

She was married (twice) to and divorced (twice) from Delbert S Hardy. They had one child, Tracy Louise.

Zoe earned a Master of Fine Art in writing from the University of Iowa’s Writers’ Workshop. She used a robust vocabulary and had excellent grammar skills that were greatly appreciated by friends and family.

Although she focused on fiction in her graduate studies, she was more successful as a published author of travel articles and personal essays. Her first published article, “Summer on Stein Mountain,” was featured in the American Mercury magazine in 1955. It recalled the summer she and Delbert spent as fire watchers in the Salmon National Forest in Idaho.

Perhaps her most important work was “What Did You Do In The War, Grandma?” It was published in Ms. magazine in 1987 and was also included in an anthology of essays by St. Martin’s Press. In it she told the story of working in a bomber plant in Omaha, Nebraska, in World War II and finding out after the fact that she had helped to build the Enola Gay and the attachments for the atom bomb that was dropped on Hiroshima.

Zoe had a great love and knowledge of classical music in general and of opera in particular. She followed the Saturday matinee live broadcasts of the Metropolitan Opera from the age of 14. She served as a volunteer usher for the summer Grand Teton Music Festival for many years.

Zoe is survived by her daughter, Tracy Hardy Johnson, granddaughters Gwyneth Tracy and Cara Johnson and great-grandson Oscar Sawyer, who all live in Minnesota. She was preceded in death by her parents, brother Berry B. Tracy and son-in-law Stevens F. Johnson.