FOND 



FAREWELL 



A Dreamer and a Doer: 



A Tribute to Kathy Hart 



It's 8:30 a.m., and Kathy Hart 

 bustles into the North Carolina Sea 

 Grant office. Her mind is already 

 working on several communications 

 projects. In fact, she probably started 

 thinking about them in the shower. 



By the time she's settled at her 

 desk, she's planned the details of a new 

 publication, made a mental list of phone 

 calls and brainstormed a few ideas for 

 Coastwatch articles. 



For 18 years, that's how Hart 

 started her day at Sea Grant. Last fall, 

 however, she retired her professional 

 crusade for the coast and began to apply 

 her talents to her new job at Alumni 

 Relations at North Carolina State 

 University. 



Sea Grant will miss Hart's unique 

 gifts as director of communications. She 

 was both ambitious and easygoing. She 

 was a likable manager who always got 

 the results she wanted. She was quick 

 with a smile, a word of encouragement 

 or a sympathetic ear. 



Along the way, Hart amassed an 

 irreplaceable wealth of knowledge about 

 the coast, its people, its heritage and 

 natural resources. Balancing responsi- 

 bilities, deadlines and projects with the 

 flair of an office acrobat, she constantly 

 honed new and better ways to communi- 

 cate everything from the latest water 

 quality research to warnings against 

 walking on dunes. 



She once even loaded a group of 

 national reporters onto a schoolbus and 

 drove them to North Carolina beaches 

 for an education on coastal science. 



"Sea Grant is significantly better 

 off, healthier and more productive 



By Jeannie Fans Norris 



because she was here," says B.J. 

 Copeland, former director of North 

 Carolina Sea Grant. "I think we made a 

 lot of big steps." 



Hart joined the North Carolina Sea 

 Grant staff as a junior writer in 1979. 

 Within five years, Copeland promoted 

 her into the position of communications 

 director. She 

 shepherded 

 Coastwatch, Sea 

 Grant's flagship 

 publication, from an 

 eight-page single- 

 theme newsletter to the 

 longer, more varied 

 magazine that it is 

 today. 



Coastn'atch will 

 likely stay the course 

 that Hart envisioned 

 for it, but North 

 Carolina Sea Grant 

 won't be the same 

 without her. Nor will 

 the national network 

 of Sea Grant pro- 

 grams, which ben- 

 efited from her ability 

 to focus on the big 

 picture, says Leigh Handal, one of 

 Hart's closest colleagues and director of 

 communications for South Carolina Sea 

 Grant. 



"I guess Kathy was like many other 

 people in that she could always generate 

 grand ideas in the shower," Handal says. 

 "But what made Kathy special was that 

 she would eventually get out of the 

 warm, comfortable shower, dry off and 

 make those ideas become reality. Kathy 



was a great dreamer, as many people 

 are. But she was also a great doer, and 

 that's a priceless combination in a 

 colleague and a friend." 



Copeland says Hart is one of the 

 most determined people he's ever met. 



"Her determination to produce 

 things, her determination to accomplish 



Then... 



things, her determination to be perfect," 

 Copeland says. "She set very high 

 standards for herself as well as for the 

 things she produced. She was deter- 

 mined to make things better and to make 

 Sea Grant a household word." 



Hart made time in her schedule, 

 already packed with projects, to take a 

 leadership role in launching the Big 

 Sweep waterway cleanup. She helped 

 secure community support for the event, 



32 WINTER 1998 



