Strength • Sacrifice • Family • Faith • The American Dream

Honoring Mary Marabella Hardas, Diana Quackenbush Jones Savasta,
Michelle Susan Savasta Hardas, and Karla Morley Cox

 

When people see ArtFactory.com today, they see the work.

They see monumental entrances, hand-carved furniture, forged iron, bronze, stained glass, historic restorations, and original works created by American master craftsmen.They see my name, H.J. Nick, associated with many of those designs. But that is only part of our story.

Behind a lifetime of designing, creating, and building are extraordinary women whose strength, sacrifice, judgment, faith, humor, and determination helped make that lifetime possible. Some stood behind me when I needed support. Some stood beside me when there was work to be done. And sometimes they stood in front and helped pull all of us forward.

There would be no complete story of H.J. Nick or ArtFactory.com without telling their stories. These are some of the women who helped build our legacy.

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Mary Marabella Hardas

The Mother Who Gave Me My Foundation

My mother, Mary Marabella Hardas, was the first great woman in my life.

Born on the Fourth of July, 1913, Mary was the youngest of six children in the Marabella family.

She was well educated, hardworking, stylish, caring, and a woman of tremendous conviction. Whether she was working in the fields or helping in the office of my grandfather’s family business in Corona, California, she carried herself with dignity.

She believed that whatever you were doing deserved to be done properly.

During World War II, she did what she could to support our soldiers and the war effort while continuing to help her family, the people who worked for them, and the family business.

During the 1940s, Mary Marabella Hardas was entrusted with managing her father’s business in Corona, California—an important responsibility for a woman of her generation. She proudly displayed this emblem of the National Federation of Business and Professional Women’s Clubs, an organization dedicated to advancing women’s leadership and opportunities in American business. The sign remains a symbol of Mary’s independence, ability and pioneering spirit.

At around thirty years old — later than most women of her generation expected to marry — her life changed.

She met my father, Hubert Hardas, a World War II serviceman stationed at March Air Force Base.

As my mother later told the story, she fell head over heels for my father. Their meeting at a defense-plant dance in San Bernardino — “San Berdoo,” as people called it — began the next chapter of our family.

But if you asked Mary about it in front of family and friends — especially with my dad sitting there — she often had a much more humorous explanation.

With a smile, she would say that the whole thing happened because she was “a sucker for a free meal.”

Everyone who knew her understood the joke.

Mary was already an educated, independent woman who came from a successful family and was perfectly capable of taking care of herself. She certainly didn’t need Hubert to buy her dinner.

That was simply Mary’s sense of humor.

Behind the teasing was a love story that lasted a lifetime. She could joke about how it began, particularly when my father was there to hear it, but there was never much question about what really happened:

Mary had fallen head over heels for Hubert. And from that chance meeting, our branch of the Hardas family began. When Poverty Came, My Mother Became Our Rock.

Life, however, would test them. My father’s mining accident brought tremendous financial hardship upon our family. We knew poverty firsthand. Those circumstances could have defeated a family.

My mother refused to allow that to happen. She became our rock. When there was little money, she made certain there was still dignity. When opportunities were limited, she insisted upon education. When circumstances could have produced bitterness, she taught us compassion and responsibility.

And when I was young and trying to find my own path, she gave me something extraordinarily valuable:

She trusted me. My formal education at that point in my life was limited, but my mother’s education of me was not. She tutored me. She encouraged me. She gave me an unusual amount of freedom and responsibility at an early age. Eventually, that included trusting me enough to leave home very young and attempt to make my own way in the world.

I wasn’t leaving because I wanted to get away from my family. I wanted to find a way to help get my family out of poverty. I went into the world with relatively little except determination and what my mother had taught me.

• She taught me that quality matters.
• She taught me that your word matters.
• She taught me to understand and care about other people.
• She taught me that dignity does not depend upon how much money you have.
• And she taught me that sacrificing something of yourself to help another human being is not weakness.

It can be one of life’s greatest rewards.

Those lessons eventually influenced the way I conducted business, treated customers and employees, and built ArtFactory. Long before there was an ArtFactory philosophy, there was a mother teaching her son what it meant to be a quality human being.

Mary gave me my foundation.

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Diana Quackenbush Jones Savasta

An American Heritage of Service, Sacrifice, and Family

My mother-in-law, Diana Quackenbush Jones Savasta, brought another remarkable American family history into ours.

Diana was the daughter of World War II hero Jack MacDermott Quackenbush, whose service and ultimate sacrifice aboard the USS Hornet became part of the history surrounding America’s response to Pearl Harbor and the Doolittle mission.

Jack’s sacrifice has always held a special place in our family. We commemorate his service elsewhere within the historical and bronze sections of ArtFactory.com because we believe Americans like Jack should never be forgotten.

Behind Diana was an even longer American story...

The Quackenbush family’s history in America extended back more than 300 years to some of America’s early settlers. Generation after generation helped build families, communities, livelihoods, and the country their descendants inherited. Diana carried that heritage forward. But her place in our legacy was not based solely upon the history she inherited. She made her own contribution.

A Mother Working Beside Her Daughter

For approximately seventeen years, Diana worked both full-time and part-time with us at ArtFactory.com, contributing her efforts to our bookkeeping department. It was Michelle who helped bring her mother into the business. For Michelle, it meant her mother could remain active, productive, involved, and surrounded by family.

For us, it meant gaining another dedicated member of the ArtFactory team. Diana wasn’t simply Michelle’s mother who occasionally visited the factory. She became part of the company.

Mother and daughter experienced something many families never have — the opportunity to work together for years, share their daily lives, and contribute together to something intended to continue into future generations.

Diana passed away three years ago, but her contribution remains part of our history.

Her desk may no longer be occupied. Her place in our story always will be.

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Michelle Susan Savasta Hardas

My Wife, My Partner, and a Driving Force Behind ArtFactory.com

When Michelle Susan Savasta Hardas entered my life in 1989, she became far more than my wife. She became my partner.

Over the decades that followed, Michelle became one of the driving forces behind ArtFactory.com. It would be inaccurate to describe Michelle merely as the woman who stood behind me. She stood beside me and helped build the company.

As Chief Financial Officer, Michelle oversees the bookkeeping and financial responsibilities necessary to keep a complex American manufacturing company operating.

But that is only one part of her contribution. Michelle is deeply involved in what we create. She works alongside me, Karla Morley Cox, and my son Tony in developing and refining many of our final products.

She contributes to design decisions, details, production, presentation, customer requirements, and the countless final judgments that determine whether something is merely completed — or whether it is worthy of carrying the ArtFactory name.

• Her eye for quality shows in our work.
• Her standards show in our work.
• Her dedication shows in our work.

After all these years, her influence can be found throughout ArtFactory. Carrying her grandfather’s American dream forward there is an even deeper meaning behind Michelle’s dedication. Her grandfather Jack gave his life serving this country. We have often thought of Michelle’s life’s work as another way of honoring that sacrifice.

Jack’s generation fought and sacrificed for an America where future generations could live freely, raise families, pursue opportunity, build businesses, practice skilled trades, create original work, and determine their own futures.

Michelle has spent much of her life doing exactly that.  She has helped carry the American Dream forward through ArtFactory.com.

We remain committed to designing original work, building it in America, employing skilled people, preserving disappearing trades, and creating things intended to survive for generations.

Michelle has been central to making that possible. Dreaming is relatively easy. Turning a dream into a functioning company year after year requires discipline, financial responsibility, sacrifice, judgment, loyalty, and relentless work. Michelle brought those qualities to our partnership.

For decades, I have been able to dream, design, build, and ask our craftsmen to accomplish things others sometimes said could not be done because I knew someone equally determined was standing beside me. That person has been Michelle.

Perhaps there could be no more fitting tribute to her grandfather Jack than making full use of the freedom and opportunity for which he sacrificed his life. Diana helped give Michelle her foundation. Michelle helped me build the dream.

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Karla Morley Cox

She Came to ArtFactory as an Employee and Became Family

Approximately twenty-eight years ago, we hired Karla Morley Cox to help us with sales.

We thought we were hiring an employee. What we gained was family. Over the years, Karla and Michelle became best friends — more like sisters. Karla also became my right hand in much of our daily operations and sales.

During those early years, her dedication was remarkable. Whatever difficulties life presented, Karla could be counted upon. Eventually, however, life gave her a challenge far greater than anything that could happen at work.

A Mother’s Greatest Responsibility

Karla’s son, Austin, was born with only half of a functioning heart and required open-heart surgery beginning almost immediately after his birth. At that moment, Karla’s greatest responsibility wasn’t ArtFactory.

It was being Austin’s mother.

She stepped away from the company for approximately six years and devoted herself to giving her son every opportunity to survive, grow, and have a future. Through surgeries, uncertainty, recovery, doctors, hospitals, and responsibilities most parents can scarcely imagine, Karla remained beside her son.

Today, Austin is seventeen years old, driving his own car, accepting greater responsibilities, looking toward higher education, and planning for a quality life of his own. Austin deserves enormous credit for his courage and determination.

But standing behind that young man has been a mother willing to put part of her own life on hold to give him the best opportunity for his.

Returning to the ArtFactory Family

When circumstances allowed, Karla returned to ArtFactory, balancing the responsibilities of family life with an increasingly important role in our company. She once again took on major responsibilities for our customers, sales, daily operations, and the development and production of our work. Through it all, Karla and her husband Barry have remained devoted to their family, while she has continued to bring that same dedication, strength, and sense of responsibility to the ArtFactory family.

Today, Karla works closely with Michelle, Tony, and me in helping turn ideas into the finished products our customers ultimately receive. Like Michelle, her contribution can be seen in the quality of our work.

Through personal challenges and professional responsibilities, she has maintained her faith in God, her family, us, and the company. Her daughter has also sometimes worked within our family business while remaining focused on her own higher education and her love of volleyball.

Once again, another generation is moving forward. Karla helped us carry the dream forward.

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Four Women — One Continuing American Story

When I look back across these women’s lives, I see four individual stories. But I also see one continuing story. A story about the strength of women. Not strength measured by who speaks the loudest or receives the most recognition...

• The strength to hold a family together when there isn’t enough money.
• The strength to give a young son freedom because you believe in him.
• The strength to carry forward a family after the sacrifice of war.
• The strength of a mother working beside her daughter.
• The strength to stand beside your husband for decades while helping build a company.
• The strength to manage the finances in the morning and help make a design decision in the afternoon.
• The strength to put a career aside because your child needs you more.
• And the strength to return years later and begin again.

These women remind us that sacrifice and success are not opposites. Sometimes sacrifice is precisely what makes lasting success possible. The Values Were Never Written in a Corporate Handbook, at ArtFactory.com, we believe in quality.

• We believe in keeping our word.
• We believe in taking responsibility for what we build.
• We believe in treating customers and employees with dignity.
• We believe skilled work has value.
• We believe knowledge should be passed from one generation to the next.
• We believe American craftsmanship is worth preserving.

And we believe something worth building should be built to last forever. Those principles did not begin in a corporate conference room.

• They began in our families.
• They came from mothers and wives.
• They came from fathers and grandfathers who sacrificed.
• They came from people who survived poverty, war, illness, economic hardship, and personal tragedy without surrendering their responsibility to the next generation.
• They came from people who got up the next morning and went back to work.

Built to Last Forever Means More Than What We Make

At ArtFactory.com, we have long said that we build our products to last forever.

As I have grown older, I have come to understand that the most important things we build are not made from wood, iron, bronze, glass, or stone. They are the values we leave behind. Mary gave me my foundation. Diana helped give Michelle hers. Michelle stood beside me and helped build the dream. Karla became family and helped us carry it forward.

Their lives are woven into the history of ArtFactory.com just as surely as the work created by the masters at our benches. When future generations look at what we built, I want them to understand something:

• It took more than craftsmen to build ArtFactory.
• It took mothers.
• It took wives.
• It took families.
• It took sacrifice.
• It took faith.
• It took trust.
• It took humor during difficult times.

It took people willing to put someone else’s future ahead of their own immediate comfort. And it took some exceptionally strong women.

The Women Who Helped Build Our Legacy

Mary Marabella Hardas

Diana Quackenbush Jones Savasta

Michelle Susan Savasta Hardas

Karla Morley Cox

They stood behind us when we needed support. They stood beside us when there was work to be done. And sometimes they stood in front and showed us the way.

This page is dedicated to them — and to the countless women like them whose names may not always appear prominently in history, but whose courage, work, sacrifice, faith, humor, and love made that history possible.

They didn’t simply witness our legacy. They helped build it.

— H.J. Nick

ArtFactory.com