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Mark Hardy
Born in Salt Lake City, Utah, Mr. Hardy graduated from the University of Utah where he earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in Mass Communication – Journalism. While pursuing his undergraduate degree, ...view moreBorn in Salt Lake City, Utah, Mr. Hardy graduated from the University of Utah where he earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in Mass Communication – Journalism. While pursuing his undergraduate degree, he earned a minor degree in French and Tahitian from his 2-year experience as a Mormon Missionary living in French Polynesia. Also, while attending college, he earned a place on the football team, and served a Communications-internship with the Salt Lake Office of Senator Orrin Hatch. Later, at night, he attended McGeorge School of Law in Sacramento, California where he worked full-time during the day to support his small family. Currently, he is licensed to practice law in California and Nevada where he serves as a litigation consultant, mediator, and judicial referee.
His success in Litigation and in Alternative forms of Dispute Resolution stems from instincts honed by his life’s experience covering two varied and successful careers enhanced by a teacher’s intuition, a salesman’s instincts, a reporter’s curiosity, and the gambit of emotion born from 36 happily married years that have given him 2 children – both happy and successful in their own rights - and 7 charming grandchildren.
Significant to his success are the cherished memories from his youth that infuse him. He grew up in what was then the small community of 3500 people called Granite, named for the stone that the founding Mormon pioneers quarried from the nearby Little Cottonwood Canyon to build the Salt Lake Temple. Little Cottonwood is home to the world famous ski resorts of Alta and Snowbird, known for the Greatest Snow on Earth. His family home was on 3 acres, nestled at the base of Lone Peak – the tallest mountain peak in the Wasatch Range of Rocky Mountains that guard the Salt Lake Valley; situated, in a protected dell, on a meandering, roller-coaster and rural road named “Dimple Dell”; and, included a horse barn that required painting, horses that needed feeding, lodge pole fences that needed mending, fire wood that need splitting, a long and steep driveway that needed plowing in the winter, asphalt repair in the summer, lawns that needed cutting, and two alphapha pastures that need watering.
He spent days riding his bike, skiing the nearby canyon, swimming Little Cottonwood Creek and splashing in the cold mountain waters of the irrigation ponds and ditches that stitched together the orchards, berry patches, and family gardens put there – in his view and that of his friends – to provide, for their sampling the “community grown” apples, pears, cherries, melons, and an array of berries and vegetables. He played little league baseball, shot baskets on the hoop at the front of the barn, golfed, and played in the first organized football league in Sandy, Utah.
Chores were not chores, but adventure; and play, within that wonderful community, was pure freedom. Like most places of our youth, Dimple Dell and the small Granite community have been swallowed by progress. The geologic vestiges remain, but the freedom of that place is gone…except in myriad memories that Mark keeps locked away, brought out not infrequently and shared, this time in a verse called “Lasterday…” .view less