Iolaanne Pierce Hardie

December 2, 1928 - July 7, 2021

Anne Hardie December 2, 1928 – July 7, 2021 Rexine Iola Anne Barnebee Pierce Zlaket Hardie was born in Los Angeles. Her biological parents Rex Barnebee and Donna Barnebee (née Bunders) named her Rexine. She had one younger sister, Dolores. Her name was changed to Iola Anne by her paternal grandmother, Iola “Missie” Barnebee Pierce, who became one of her guardians during her mother’s hospitalization from tuberculosis. Iola Anne’s tumultuous early years were full of loss and change: her mother succumbed to TB in 1935, her paternal grandmother shortly thereafter. She spent some years in the care of her unstable father, as well as in foster homes. Eventually, she was adopted by Harry Pierce, the widower of Missie. Harry married Marjorie McMurray and together they became Iola Anne’s legal adoptive parents. They also took in Iola’s sister, Dolores, who had been living elsewhere for several years. Under their care, Iola Anne attended San Marino Hall School for Girls. After Harry’s death in 1944, she attended Mar-Ken High School in Hollywood. During her time at San Marino Hall School for Girls, Iola Anne connected with a U.S. Navy motor machinist named Carl Zlaket. As a favor to fellow student, she agreed to write Carl a letter letting him know that the other girl had a new boyfriend and couldn’t correspond with him anymore. Carl responded to Iola Anne’s letter. They stayed in touch, and dated when he came home on leave. Around this time, Iola Anne began going by Anne. Anne took classes at USC, and had an idea of becoming a doctor. She also hoped to have her own family and to be a mother. Carl and Anne were married in 1947. They had five children: Michelle, Carlene, Rick, Cheryl, and Denise, who died in 1963. Anne had always wanted to have a big family and loved having kids around her. As a family, they took camping trips to Yosemite. Anne and Carl took dancing lessons and hosted dance parties at their home. They were also members of the Orange County Sports Car club and had fun participating in rallies to Las Vegas, Mexico, and elsewhere. Sundays were always spent visiting and eating dinner at the home of Carl’s parents in Santa Ana. During her years as a wife and mother, Anne shared homes with her family in Los Angeles, La Habra, Fullerton, and Orange. She worked as a tax writer at H&R Block and had her own cosmetics enterprise as an independent sales representative for Fashion Two-Twenty. After her divorce from Carl in 1973, she lived in Fullerton and worked as a waitress, a supermarket bookkeeper and cashier, and was a telephone switchboard manager in Los Angeles. In 1975, she bought a mobile home at a park in Riverside, where she lived for many years. In 1976, Anne married James Hardie, the son of her next-door neighbor in the mobile home park. Jim was a commercial truck driver. Anne accompanied him on numerous cross-country trips, sometimes driving the trucks herself. In the 1980s, she worked as an administrator at a flight training academy in Riverside called Parflight. After she and Jim retired, they bought a fifth wheel travel trailer, which they parked at an RV park in Hemet near Anne’s daughter, Carlene. Anne loved to cook dinners for her new neighbors, sit around the fires they built at night, and tell stories. With Hemet as their home base, Anne and Jim and spent more time on the road together, caravanning with their fellow RV owners to other states and making friends in far-flung places. The ability to make friends was a special gift of Anne’s. She never met a stranger, and had an effortless way of connecting with others. With her bright blue eyes, ready smile, and good-natured aura, she had a big, charismatic presence. She had friends all over. Whether it was the crew at her favorite donut shop or the people who’d known her since she was a teenager, Anne loved and was dearly loved by many people. She made a lasting impression on most of those with whom she crossed paths. She was down to earth, talkative, and she had a great sense of humor. She was self-deprecating and never took herself too seriously. Anne brought a certain spark to any room she walked into, and she brought people together. As she grew older, Anne always enjoyed time with her grandchildren: Natalie, Nicholas, Travis, Matthew, and Joshua. With Natalie, she took drives from Southern California up to Grass Valley to spend time with her other grandkids. She had a lifelong love of youngsters. After Jim’s death, Anne lived in an apartment in Grass Valley, close to her son Rick and daughter Michelle. She often hosted get-togethers for the residents in her apartment building. She was an avid reader all her life, and when she wasn’t in the company of friends or family she was often reading books; history was a special interest of hers. She also enjoyed Western movies and counted John Wayne as a favorite of the silver screen. Johnny Mathis was her favorite singer. Anne was a lifelong believer in God. She was never without her gold cross or religious medallion, she enjoyed attending Mass and other church services with friends and family, and she prayed every night before sleep. She was also a member of the Order of the Eastern Star, and served for a time as Worthy Matron of her chapter. In this leadership position, she enjoyed traveling around the state with her fellow members to visit other chapters and organize fundraising dinners for different charities. Her involvement in the OES meant a lot to her. In 2018, Anne moved out of her apartment in Grass Valley and lived near her eldest daughter, Michelle and her son Rick. She then moved in with her youngest daughter, Cheryl in Yorba Linda, and subsequently into a small eldercare home where she was known for cracking jokes and making heartfelt connections with her caregivers. Throughout her life, Anne faced a number of health challenges, including several miscarriages, a broken back, macular degeneration, and two heart attacks. Still, she was always a remarkably strong-spirited person. A resilient survivor, she outlived all of her peers, and was truly the last one standing among all the people in her age group with whom she’d been close. Even while struggling with dementia-related complications toward the end of her life, her spirit remained vibrant, and she loved being in the company of others, talking, telling stories, making faces and funny sounds, singing, and eliciting laughs from everyone around her. She was surrounded by all of her children during her final days. She died peacefully in bed. Anne is survived by: her children Michelle Reynolds, Carlene Fenner and son-in-law Marvin Fenner, Rick Zlaket and daughter-in-law Julianne Zlaket, and Cheryl Brown and her fiancé Shan Totty; her grandchildren, Natalie Brown, Nicholas Lenn, Travis Reynolds and his partner Trish Leineke, Matthew Zlaket and his wife Katie Zlaket, Joshua Zlaket and his fiancé Chalay Tinoso; her great-grandchildren, Arrow, Zumi Gold, Auden, and Aliyah; and nephews Rick Wuilliez and Allen Shuster. Anne’s ashes are interred with her husband Jim’s at Riverside National Cemetery in Riverside, California. “You ask how long I'll love you; I'll tell you true: Until the twelfth of never, I'll still be loving you.”