Saying Goodbye to Our Friend and Colleague, Alvah Hardy

It breaks my heart to share that our beloved friend and colleague, Alvah Hardy, passed away Friday, January 10, 2020. Alvah has been a pillar in the APS family for close to a decade, serving as our Executive Director of Facilities Services since joining APS in November 2010.

From 2010 to now, Alvah has had an impact on the lives of so many of us in his role in Facilities, making the sad news of his passing reverberate across the halls of every school and office building in our district.

In addition to working closely with staff in every school or building in APS, Alvah’s work kept him in close contact with people and organizations throughout the community. It was not uncommon for Alvah to be engaging with elected officials, neighborhood associations, community groups and everyday citizens who had questions about our schools and facilities. No question would go unanswered.

For those of you who may not have known him, Alvah spearheaded our most beautiful and recent renovations and construction through the SPLOST work in the district. I’m sure you’ve seen the new Walden Field, or the renovation of Howard and the new construction of Tuskegee Airman Global Academy, which just opened this school year.

He was also behind the renovations at Hollis and Gideons. Those projects were all led by Alvah, beginning as ideas on paper and evolving into gorgeous facilities that serve our students and staff. His hands helped guide those structures through to completion.

You can rest assured that everything Alvah touched, he touched with great care and attention to detail, from the repair of wobbly steps, wonky fences, and rickety handrails, to the large-scale school renovations and new construction. No project was too small or unimportant to him.

Alvah helped give APS the lift we needed as part of our transformational work in our schools and facilities.

And, most recently, he played a major role in our facilities master plan process. This is our comprehensive five to 10-year look at population growth and school enrollment projections to help guide our decision making and spending around the need to expand existing schools or build new ones.

We are currently in the community engagement process of the facilities master plan of which Alvah was a key part.

I know that for many of us, Alvah was not just a colleague, but he truly was a member of our family. That makes his passing even more difficult to process.

We will never forget his determination, grit and his passion and commitment to APS. At the end of the day, everything he did was done with fidelity and grace. For that, we are all eternally grateful.

To Alvah’s beloved family, I offer my deepest condolences during this difficult time and I’m sorry for your loss. To Alvah’s APS family, especially our operations, schools and facilities teams who worked the closest with him and his direct reports Jere Smith, Director of Capital Improvements; Robert Palmer, Director of Maintenance and Operations; Herb Joseph, Director of Administration Management; and Tanya Cooper, Administrative Assistant; I offer my sincere condolences and my shoulder to lean on. We stand with you during this difficult time, and we will get through this together. Much love to all of you, and please take care of each other and your families.

Alvah, you will truly be missed, but we will hold on to the great memories in APS and we’ll never forget how you touched our buildings and our lives.