When my friend Kathy Ott suggested that The Mountain-Ear pay tribute to one of our own, I jumped at the chance to start writing. I can’t begin to tell you how often I settled for a job, dreaded going to work, or felt personally and professionally mistreated.
That was until I returned from Europe in 2018 and began my job search for the perfect career. After several weeks of applying to numerous Colorado magazines and newspapers and getting one rejection after the other, I came across a small job posting that read something like this:
Mountain publication seeks a reporter for a weekly column. Email: publisher1977@gmail.com.
I figured one more rejection wasn’t going to hurt. I emailed my resume, references, and samples of my work. Roughly two hours later, a response came through. That response was the beginning of a life-changing career opportunity.
Barbara Hardt doesn’t know how much she has positively impacted the lives of people in her community as well as her staff. We felt it necessary to let her and the community know. Here’s what some of the staff have to say about our Managing Editor.
“Barb is a community hero! Hardworking, caring, and always on top of the area news events. She has done a magnificent job building The Mountain-Ear. She has done a magnificent job keeping us informed.” - Charles Smith
“I was first involved with Barb in 2008 when I began writing stories for her (before that, I had written for the previous owner of The Mountain-Ear, as well as for the other paper). A few years later, I became Barb’s editor. I think that now we laugh at some of the conflicts we had as two strong personalities tried to work together. Nevertheless, we put out one hell of a good Paper.
In 2018, poor health – mostly the inability to live at altitude and miles from necessary healthcare – led us to leave Gilpin. Finances drove us to exile in Texas (where John has family). We were both heartbroken to leave our community behind. But wait! Along came Barb to save the day! She started by asking me to rewrite the Style Sheet I had developed for our writers, then asked me to write a few pieces, then asked me to return to editing. Saved!
I once more had work I love with people I respect, and a link to the community I still think of as home. And never again conflict: just love and support. I couldn’t be happier. Thank you, Barb.” - Lynn Hirshman
“It has been a privilege to work with Barb on The Mountain-Ear.” - Patrice LeBlanc
“Many of you already know how Barb came to work for the paper. In a nutshell, I initially hired her to work only six hours a week to help with classifieds. She outperformed and went above and beyond the same way she approached everything in life and within a year, owned it. When she walked in to apply for the job, this was not the first time I had met her, it was actually the second. This is the part of our story that not many people, if any, know.
The first time that I met Barbara was during a garage sale she was having at her house. I was driving through, saw the sign, and stopped in. There was Barb, standing there holding a kid on each hip, helping three people at once and probably also doing her taxes all at the same time. I started browsing, we started talking. She somehow got it out of me in minutes I was new to the area. I was a single mom with a five-year-old and lived in a mostly empty apartment in Nederland.
She then started gathering everything she could think of from her sale that I might need. Within 20 minutes, I had a box full of stuff, dishes, blankets, clothes, and toys for my son. As I went to pay, she said, ‘Oh, you don’t need to pay me for any of this. I was just going to donate it anyway at the end of the day if I didn’t sell it.’
It was maybe 10 in the morning when I stopped by and she basically gave me half the stuff from her sale. She didn’t know me. She just sensed right away that I could really use the help, and she helped.
That is who she is. It is who she will always be. If you are lucky enough to know her and be her friend, you know the incredible impact she has on everyone around her.
So needless to say, when she walked into the office for the job, it was an immediate yes. No need to check references and, ‘you can start right now.’ I truly wish we had more people in this world like Barbara Hardt.” - Cynthia Davis
“Barb, it has been a joy to work with you. I am so grateful for your faith in me and for everything you have done for Nederland. Nederland would truly not be the same without you and all your hard work on behalf of The Mountain-Ear. It has been an honor.” - Mark Cohen
“Barbara Hardt, along with Scott Bakke, invited me to write for The Mountain-Ear for the first time in April of 2019, when they needed three paragraphs to be submitted for Nederland Middle-Senior High School’s production of Chicago. I happened to be in this production, so I decided to give it a try. Before I knew it, I was brought in to write more for the paper -- business columns, event updates, and eventually, my own weekly music column. This has given me a leg up in my dream career as a writer, as it gives me a portfolio of published work that I can show to people.
In addition, my work on The Mountain-Ear Podcast over the last year and a half has allowed me to work on my editing skills, which surely helped give me a volunteer position for another podcast, The Creative Process. This community newspaper is incredibly important for the community as a whole. It gives us an archive of information to look back on in the Peak to Peak area and it allows us to feel included as part of the community as a whole.
Barbara Hardt’s contribution to the paper, in my mind, kept it afloat and allowed it to prosper even after the death of Barbara Lawlor, somebody who essentially was the newspaper for as long as the Peak to Peak community could remember. Her hard work has earned her this managing editor position and a long-needed vacation, and she should be proud of the work she’s done to keep something so important to the community alive and flourishing.” - Jamie Lammers
“After years in Kansas and Pennsylvania, I came back to my home in Pinecliffe. I had written for The Mountain-Ear after my graduate degree in journalism from the University of Kansas. When I came back to Colorado, I saw an ad for a reporter for The Mountain-Ear. I applied and met with Barb. She assigned me to cover the Downtown Development Authority. I wrote the article with Teresa Crush Warren, who also had been in journalism. The article was accepted and I have been with The Mountain-Ear for 12 years now. Barb has created a wonderful newspaper, and everywhere I go, I am told what a great newspaper it is. It looks like we will continue to have a great paper for years to come.” - John Scarffe
“It’s been wonderful working for you these years! Thanks for keeping everything afloat!” - Mindy Leary
“This community is lucky to have somebody like Barb, who is so devoted to the presentation, promotion, and preservation of the goings on up here in these wild, windy peaks. Barb makes a paper that tells our stories in such caring, creative and wonderful ways and this place would not be the same without her.” - Alexander Shalom Joseph
“Even if it was freelance, the opportunity to write for The Mountain-Ear, to research and get to know the wonderful places and people in the Peak to Peak, is a dream come true for me. Barbara took a chance on that dream, hiring me to write though I lived in Denver.
For several months I only knew her face from her Peak Perspectives editorial and her voice from covering NDDA meetings. Barbara’s knowledge of the area and selflessness helped my wife and I find a stable place to live here in Nederland, through her invaluable advice and masterful networking skills.
Eventually, I met Barbara in person and got to know her and realized that she extends that selfless assistance and genuine care to a lot of people. She does the work of a dozen people to get the paper out every week and somehow still has the time and energy to positively impact people’s lives on a personal level.
I am thankful to Barbara for everything that she’s done, for me, for The Mountain-Ear, and for the community.” - Christopher Kelley
“Hey Barbara, you have been very good to us, and we love you.” - John, Lorena, and Sophie (Pet of the Year Emerita.)
“I have been with The Mountain-Ear for several years now because I enjoy working with Barbara Hardt and I love the work we all do together. Her passion for the newspaper and the community is impossible not to absorb. There is no competition, this is a team. Barb is a leader who welcomes others’ thoughts and she expresses her gratitude. A week does not go by when we are finishing the paper around midnight and emails are flying back and forth that there isn’t a note of gratitude or a line saying we need to sleep, this will get done in the morning.
She has inspired and encouraged me to have a bigger role with the newspaper than I ever thought I would, or aspired to have. She recognizes the hard work people put into the paper and how challenging this work is because she has touched every piece of it herself over the years. Barb positively communicates and motivates, and the foundation of all of this is trust.
Thank you, Barb, for inspiring, motivating, and trusting me. Also, thank you for continuing to work with us to make The Mountain-Ear the best local newspaper we can every week.” - Sara Sandstrom
“Barbara is constantly cultivating fresh ideas while dutifully maintaining The Mountain-Ear’s local flavor. It is her hard work and dedication that have transformed our hometown newspaper into the beloved successful quality publication that it is today. It has been and continues to be my great pleasure to work with her.” - Dave Gibson
“Barb, I am always amazed at how hard you work, how much the paper means to you, and how good a manager you are for the people who support and report to The Mountain-Ear.” - Doug Armitage
“It is exceedingly rare to encounter people who care enough about the civic health of their community to dedicate themselves to it professionally. Even more exceptional are those who shoulder that tiring mantle over the long haul. Barbara is one of those rare individuals, and all of our Front Range mountain communities are beneficiaries of her tireless dedication.” - Derek Ridgley
Heroes, angels, and leaders all have different meanings in our lives. For many of us at The Mountain-Ear, they look like Barb. It is not only writing, researching, being creative, exploring our state, and helping the community that makes me love my job so much. Above all things, it’s being treated with respect, compassion, patience, openness, and acceptance that makes me excited to go to work every day.
When everyone else rejected me or treated me as an indispensable object, one person saw something in me worthy of taking a chance on. Working for Barbara has been an experience and feeling I have never known.
This is well overdue, and if anyone deserves recognition and appreciation, it’s Barbara Hardt. She once said, “Here I am, the luckiest woman around because I am working the job of my dreams and now sharing that dream with a whole team of incredible people!”
In reality, we’re the lucky ones.
