MORENCI — Harold and Caroline Hart raised 11 children in their home at 220 W. Locust St. in Morenci. And it was just a few blocks away that their descendants gathered for the 50th anniversary of the annual Hart family reunion on Aug. 9.
The reunion was started in 1975 by Hazel Bear, their oldest daughter, and has been going ever since.
The couple were married in Detroit in 1915 and moved to Morenci in 1929.
They had 11 children: Hazel, Edwin, Russell, Harold Jr., David, Louise, Richard, Eleanor, Earl, Donelda, and Donald John, who died as an infant.
Dan Hart, the son of seventh son Richard, remembers their home as a red-shingled three bedroom house. Harold, a World War I veteran, worked as a barber and converted one of the bedrooms into a barbershop after their children were grown.
“Grandpa had barbershop blue walls with chairs lined up against both walls and two stands full of comic books,” Hart said.
Hart can remember some of the things his grandfather was fond of saying to customers, like “See you in the funny papers,” “Don’t take no wooden nickels,” and “Golly gum drops!”
Hart, who still lives in Morenci, heads up the reunion, a job his father also did before him. His father used to have to get up at 5 a.m. to go down to the park and nail his homemade “Hart Reunion” sign to the pavilion to claim it; today the city has a reservation system.
Both Harold and Caroline Hart died in 1973, so they never attended one of the reunions. But their descendants believe they’d be happy to know the tradition is still going on.
“They’d be proud. They’d be smiling,” Dan Hart said.
“We always talk about how we’re making them proud by keeping it going. This family was their love.”
