Hubert Hardas Bio

HUBERT HARDAS (1905–1983)

Coal Miner • U.S. Air Force Veteran

A Legacy of Strength — Told by His Oldest Son, Jerry Hardas (H.J. Nick)

Some men are born into opportunity. Others are born into hardship so deep it would break most people before they ever have a chance to grow. Hubert Hardas was one of those men.

He was born in 1905, an orphan from the very beginning of life. As the story was passed down, he was left on a church step by a father from Belgium — a man he would never know. In those early years, Hubert was placed into the foster program in Southern Illinois, and instead of being given the childhood every boy deserves, he was given something else: Work. Danger. The coal mines.

Hubert was only 10 years old when he first entered the mine to work. Not above ground. Not in daylight. But underground, in the darkness—doing a grown man’s labor with a boy’s body, carrying a pick and shovel, learning early what fear, fatigue, and survival felt like.

Those mines didn’t just take strength from a man. They took time, breath, and youth. They shaped a person from the inside out. And Hubert grew up fast — because life demanded it. He was never given the chance to be formally educated. He never got to sit in a classroom and learn the way other boys did. And because of that, when it came time to sign his name, he signed with an “X.”

But Hubert’s life proved something the world forgets too easily:                             

•      A man is not measured by the handwriting on a paper.
•      A man is measured by the weight he carries — and still stands.

When the nation called, Hubert stepped forward and joined the United States Air Force. He served his country as a cook, and although he wanted to do more, he carried a frustration that stayed with him: he wasn’t allowed to fight overseas, in part because he could not read what others could — simple signs, directions, and written orders.

Still, he served with honor. And when his service was complete, Hubert returned home and found what became the greatest blessing of his life. He met my mother, Mary Marabella, at a defense plant dance — the kind of place where Americans gathered during the war years, working hard and holding onto hope. Hubert and Mary married, and together they began building what he had never been given as a child: A home. A family. A future.

In 1947, I was born — his oldest son, the beginning of the family he was determined to protect and provide for. My brothers followed, and Hubert did what working men have always done when the world doesn’t hand them anything: He went back
to work.

He returned to the mines — because that was the work he knew, and because providing for his wife and children mattered more to him than comfort, ease, or safety. But the mines are unforgiving.

While working in a shaft mine in Illinois, my father was buried in a mine cave-in. He survived — but he suffered devastating injuries. The damage to his body was severe and permanent. It left him disabled and crippled, carrying pain and limitation for the rest of his life. Yet even then, the story did not end.

Hubert lived on until 1983, not only as a survivor of tragedy, but as a man who endured the long road afterward — still a husband, still a father, still a tough son of a hard life who refused to be defined by what happened to him. He may have signed his name with an “X.” But he left behind something far greater than ink.

•      He left behind character.
•      He left behind strength.
•      He left behind proof that even when a man is denied education, denied opportunity, and broken by hardship
            — he can still build a legacy.

When we interred him in Southern Indiana, I felt it was right to honor him the way working people deserve to be honored—plainly, proudly, and permanently. I had a large marble headstone created and placed on that hillside cemetery in Terre Haute, Indiana, so it would stand long after we were gone. That stone tells the truth simply: That he was a coal miner. That his wife was a shop keeper. And that together they left behind what mattered most — three loving sons.

That memorial stands there today as a witness to their lives, and as a reminder that America was built by men like Hubert Hardas — men whose names may not appear in history books, but whose strength is written into the foundation of families, communities, and generations.

                                                                                                                                      BASE INSCRIPTION                   

                                                                                                                   HUBERT HARDAS (1905–1983)

                                                                                                                                      Coal Miner • U.S. Air Force Veteran

                                                                                                                                      Signed with an “X” —

                                                                                                                                      . . . but left a legacy written in strength.