Sally Anne Royle Hardy, popular emergency management administrator, dies at 83

Sally Anne Royle Hardy, 83, of Philadelphia, a popular and efficient longtime administrator with the city’s Office of Emergency Management and later with the Southeastern Pennsylvania Regional Task Force for emergency management, died Tuesday, Feb. 15, of pneumonia at VITAS hospice center at Nazareth Hospital.

Organized, collegial, and scrupulously honest, Ms. Hardy spent more than two decades in the 1980s and ‘90s overseeing the hazardous materials response fund for the city’s Office of Emergency Management. She was a liaison between the city administration and companies required to contribute to the fund, and the confusion that resulted when the program was first created in the 1980s led to her doing a lot more than checking off boxes.

Larger companies often had specific managers to monitor their use of hazardous chemicals and pay fees required by the city. But smaller firms sometimes struggled to keep up with the added paperwork and navigate the complex handbook of regulations.

“So they would call the office, and Sally would walk them through the process,” said Mike Nucci, Philadelphia’s former director of emergency management. “But she was so patient, so understanding, that she would end up doing all their work filling out the papers. She was so generous, so conscientious.”

Before that, Ms. Hardy spent several years as a special events coordinator in the city’s Office of the Managing Director. She helped plan and execute holiday parades, fireworks on the Fourth of July, and other big citywide events, including the yearlong celebration of the country’s bicentennial in 1976.

In the early 2000s, she worked for the Southeastern Pennsylvania Task Force for emergency management and was listed as a local contact in the Coast Guard’s Hazardous Materials Response Special Teams Capabilities and Contact Handbook.

“She could do everything,” Nucci said. “If there was a problem for someone, Sally knew what to do. One person said to me once: ‘That Sally is quite daunting.’ ”

Born Dec. 24, 1938, in Philadelphia, Ms. Hardy and her younger brother, George, grew up in Elkins Park. She graduated from Abington High School, attended St. Mary’s College, now St. Mary’s School, in Raleigh, N.C., and married Paul D. Hardy in the early 1960s. They later divorced.

Smart, funny, and opinionated, she had no problem sharing her views and often exclaimed “whaaaat?!” when she was surprised or excited. Her classmates at St. Mary’s wrote in a yearbook that she was “a devilish and vivacious Yankee once quoted as saying, ‘I’m not going to sing Dixie,’ ” during her time as a college student in North Carolina.

She was social, stylish, and sophisticated, called good things “marvelous,” and often went out of her way to make things marvelous for her family and friends. She helped pay for her nephew’s trip to London as a high school graduation gift and served as a glamorous role model for her niece, Abigail Royle, and other women.

“I found her very mysterious [as a child] because she spoke to children as though they were just short adults, which was not typical of anyone else I was around day-to-day,” said her niece.

Ms. Hardy spent many summers in Cape May as a young woman, danced on the piers, and later regaled her niece and others with memories of walks on the beach and other jaunts around town. She liked to shop and go to the theater. She made friends easily, many of whom she stayed in touch with for years.

She refused a $15 gift basket when she worked for the city to avoid a conflict of interest, and a friend wrote in an online tribute: “Sally was great. Wonderful coworker and person.”

“She was one of the best people who ever worked for me,” Nucci said. “Everybody loved her.”

In addition to her niece, Ms. Hardy is survived by other relatives. Her brother and former husband died earlier.

A private celebration of her life is to be held later.

Donations in her name may be made to the Salvation Army Greater Philadelphia, 701 North Broad St., Philadelphia, Pa. 19123.