Article originally appeared in the March 2023 Legacy Ledger (Issue 33).
We’re taking a moment to look back on the incredible life and legacy of Carol Richert Hart (NAHS, 1953).
Carol’s story is one of curiosity, courage, and service. From her early days as valedictorian at New Albany High School to a global career supporting health, education, and development across Africa and beyond, she lived a life that reached far beyond our community while still making us incredibly proud to call her one of our own.
Since this spotlight was first published, Carol has passed. We are grateful to have had the opportunity to share her story and celebrate the impact she made throughout her life.
-Rex Bickers (FCHS ‘70)
Carol Richert Hart
(NAHS, 1959)
In Memoriam: Since the original publication of this article, we are saddened to share that Carol Hart passed away on October 23, 2024.
The U.S. Department of State is engaged in economic development, health, and education programs around the world. In Carol Hart’s career, many of these programs interconnect to numerous chapters in her decades of global service. Carol pursued a life where her curiosity and her heart led her.
Carol was inducted into the NAHS Hall of Fame in 2022. She had excelled in high school: editor of the NAHS Blotter, Class Secretary, and valedictorian. She earned a Ford Foundation Masters Program scholarship to go to IU. She took an unexpected turn there: a unique Cold War pilot program, offering Intensive Russian language studies. With a BA magna cum laude in Government and Russian language (with Phi Beta Kappa distinction), she remained at IU for grad school. She completed an MA in French literature and entered the doctoral program in French and Italian. She was a graduate instructor and completed all the PhD course work… but chose a non-academic career and world travel.
After Bloomington, an inflection point came during Carol’s summer travels in Yugoslavia, when she met Terry Hart, a British aeronautical engineer who became her husband eventually. The two of them joined the fabled “Hippie Trail” (headed towards India) in 1969, traveling over land. Nine months later, they stopped in Afghanistan, struck by the physical beauty of a place that seemed to be living, as Carol remembers it… in a medieval time-warp. Terry was almost immediately offered a position on the Faculty of Engineering at Kabul University, and Carol became Director of the English Language Center of the US Information Service (USIS) in Kabul. The Harts were in Kabul from 1970-75, and their first son, Markku Toryalai, was born there.
For thirty-three years, Carol oversaw a broad range of activities across Africa… initially in Algeria, then continuing on to Mali, to Kenya and Nigeria. She directed health and education programs for two nonprofit Boston companies that had USAID (Agency for International Development) contracts and two Washington-based non-governmental organizations (NGOs). She managed a regional training program in demography, which included setting up the first computerized census for nine African nations. She was relocated to Mali’s Ministry of Health for ever-expanding programs: family planning,
HIV/AIDS prevention and improvements in adolescent reproductive health. By 1996, she was recruited as an advisor to the Center for African Family Studies in Kenya. She followed that with management of a $95 million regional project in Nigeria for health, education and governance. That went on to include an emergency polio vaccination component, 2006-2008.
The Harts’ older son, Tory, is a health sector logistics specialist, contracting to UNICEF and WHO. Their younger son, Ashby, died tragically at the age of 29 while working as a veterinary technician in California. There is also an unofficially adopted son, Alfousseiny Kelly, born in Mali (now a US citizen) and currently living in Boston. He is well known as an artist throughout West Africa, where his paintings have received numerous awards.
Most recently, she has been “playing granny” to her two granddaughters, ages 9 and 11, while their father renovates the family’s 200-year-old farmhouse in the French Alps.
Read the entire May 2023 Legacy Ledger (Issue 33).