Nevada Harward Obituary (1942 - 2024)

On Saturday, February 10, 2024, Nevada Jane Ellison Harward, pioneering homemaker and mother to eight children, passed away at the age of 81. Below is a story of her life and legacy. Early Life: Nevada was born on September 6, 1942 in Elko, Nevada, the first-and-only born to Edward James Ellison and Helen Eardley. But tragedy struck the fledgling family immediately as Edward, who was away on a cattle-buying trip when Nevada was born, was killed in a car accident on his way to greet them at the hospital. His last loving words to his wife and his yet-to-be-named (and unknown gendered) child were “take care of our little Nevada.” Helen’s grief was so severe that she could not manage to take her newborn home. And because no other family was around to assist, baby Nevada was cared for by hospital nurses in a quasi-foster system for several months before her mother was able to overcome her sorrow enough to care for her. Nevada was so proud of how her name honored Edward, and she grew up adoring the father she only knew through stories. Her mother maintained a garden to remember him, and doted on Nevada as the legacy of both their love and of his final words. Her mother was protective and very strict in her expectations. She could even be cold at times, no doubt impacted still by her own grief. Helen was herself a talented pianist, and she made sure Nevada practiced at least an hour every day. She also required Nevada to take art lessons and develop similar talents her artistic father had. Though Helen later remarried, every year she would take Nevada away to Newport Beach for the summer and while there they would attend the Pageant of the Masters. Nevada suspected this annual pilgrimage to mingle with artists was another tribute to her father. And it was during one of those summers that she accompanied her mother to the hospital for what Nevada believed was a routine checkup. In fact, her mother was being treated for a heart condition and passed away during the procedure. At 15 years old, waiting unsuspectingly in the lobby of an unfamiliar hospital, Nevada faced the reality of having lost everything she ever loved - not only her disciplined and protective mother, but she lost for the second time the father she so adored and could only experience through her mother. Little is known about how Nevada processed so much grief and loss at such a formative time. Yet as the rest of her life would prove, she persisted. College: She arrived at Utah State University in the fall of 1960, radiant as ever, and joined the Kappa Delta sorority. Talented as she was in art and music, Nevada lacked the domestic skills and knowhow that were necessary for survival. Friends recall her practice of simply throwing away underwear and buying new pairs because she didn’t know how to do laundry. But she did have a sophisticated sense of style and fashion, so she soon made a deal with some of her sorority sisters, including Karine Allen, to cut and style hair in exchange for them doing her laundry. Her natural beauty was transcendent, and her personality made her popular with all the other women as well as the guys on campus. In April of 1962, Nevada competed in the Miss Cache Valley beauty pageant and won - her talents in the competition were an art demonstration along with a story-type reading. And afterward her pin-up pictures were hung in the union building on campus, making her even more well known. While she had her choice of many suitors, she fell in love quickly with a star running back on the football team named Raymond Harward, who also happened to be the most handsome guy she’d ever met. From that time forward, she always loved Ray. Ray came from a large family of 10, and his younger sister Cathy still remembers her first impression of Nevada. Cathy saw herself as a gawky, awkward, and self-conscious 13-year-old girl when Ray first brought Nevada to meet everyone. And the fact that Nevada, a “glamorous beauty queen,” not only noticed her, but treated her as an equal, won her heart. Nevada shared her time and often her clothes with Cathy, who had previously been unaware of designer labels. More than 60 years later, Cathy still remembers being especially delighted when Nevada gave her a mint-green sleeveless summer dress by Lanz of Salsburg because, up until then, all her dresses had been homemade. Ray and Nevada married in 1962. And in April of 1963, nearing the end of her junior year and while she was completing her student teaching requirements, they had their first child. Yet Nevada was determined to finish school without interruption so, with the help of a mentorship she had established with a female professor and some coordination with Ray’s class and football schedule, she managed to still graduate in 1964 with a degree in elementary education. Homemaking Trailblazer: Just to get that far is vindication enough of Nevada’s grit and determination. But the next phase of her life is the most remarkable example of the person she was. Nevada was starting her own family with no experience or ideas of how it should be structured. She had no experience cooking or providing for others, let alone infants. In fact, she had never even held a baby prior to her first child being born. She had been an only child, orphaned at a critical age, with no known close family beyond a stepfather who offered support where he could. She still didn’t even know how to do laundry thanks to the agreement she had made earlier in college. And in 1965, those responsibilities and expectations belonged solely to women. It would be her undertaking, even as she also began teaching at an elementary school in Davis County. Ugh. Ray’s large family offered critical support and guidance early on. However, Nevada shared the fierce independence of her mother, at times even stubbornness. And above all her natural talents, Nevada had a deep motivation for achievement and excellence. As long as homemaking would be her calling, she was determined to take it on in her own way. Mentorships were important to Nevada, so she began searching for other women with the expertise she felt was sufficient to model after, given her ambition of excellence. She found several speakers and authors offering different perspectives and frameworks on homemaking at the time, such as Daryl Hoole, Barbara Perry, and Ardeth Kapp. These women were innovators in areas such as home organization, time management, and female leadership. And despite never having met before, she was persistent in tracking them down and convincing them to be mentors. By the time Nevada and Ray moved their family to Arizona in 1974, just after giving birth to their fifth child, Nevada was more than adequate with these skills. By coincidence, she moved three houses down from Karine (Allen) Eliason, one of the sorority sisters she had made the bargain with during her freshman year. The two rekindled their friendship through a shared passion for homemaking. And soon after they found themselves, along with another friend, invited to do a cooking segment on Open House, a popular morning talk show on KPHO-TV (CBS) in Phoenix. Audience feedback and engagement from their presentation was so strong that they were asked to return as permanent, recurring guests every two weeks. Nevada worked hard to prepare for each segment, as the team began collaborating on something much bigger. They studied master mixes that were made available by several state university extension programs as part of federal food and nutrition research grants, exposing emerging scholarship ideas, and they incorporated other homemaking principles and personal experience that challenged the limits of possibility for many women who either lacked confidence or struggled to feel successful balancing motherhood with other ambitions. The television segments lasted four years, after which a publishing company approached them with a cookbook proposal. Nevada and the other “Make-a-Mix” ladies eventually published multiple best-selling books, scaling their reach to sell close to two and a half million copies. Nevada was asked to travel all over the country through a Tupperware sponsorship, giving high-end presentations to tens of thousands of women. In context of the times, Nevada’s achievement was even more extraordinary. Women had only received the federal right to have their own credit cards (independent of their husbands) in 1974. So by 1979, when Nevada and the other “Make-a-Mix ladies” were earning as much as their husbands, traveling around in corporate luxury with expenses paid for them on their own merit, and allowing their husbands to tag along when it suited them, they were quite an oddity. One of the topics they were asked most about by the press throughout the 1970’s and 1980’s was the Equal Rights Amendment. There was certainly a paradox to Nevada’s trailblazing. On the one hand, she was the embodiment of what she was preaching - that women could balance their different ambitions with better skills and planning in the home. Yet on the other hand, she was reinforcing gender stereotypes of women as homemakers at a time many were trying to break them down. But her sons may tell you, even at that time, Nevada may have had a more egalitarian approach to homemaking than people understood. She certainly expected all of her boys to develop those talents in equal measure to her daughters. And the “Make-a-Mix ladies” spoke so much about their husbands’ involvement in homemaking that the men were asked to do one of the television segments on their own to prove to the audience they were telling the truth. Ray chose to demonstrate how to make a lime tart on that episode. Achievement, Service, and Generosity: In its totality, the Make-a-Mix story is emblematic of how Nevada approached just about everything. She did it with a lot of grit and determination. And anything she learned from others she would enhance with her natural creativity and artistic talent to make it her own. She was driven toward excellence in any endeavor she pursued. And once she developed her talents, she was eager to share and pay back the mentorship so critical to her in earlier stages of life. There were so many other talents Nevada developed: quilting; tole painting; sewing; candy making; calligraphy; salt-dough sculpting and more. Any interesting craft she saw, or any trending product, Nevada would say “oh we can do that on our own.” With each one she would learn the basics and then gloss that knowledge with her creativity to make it even better. And once perfected she shared with everyone around her, both in the form of her creations and in the form of mentorship. Nevada of course shared those talents with her eight children. She was not as strict as her own mother, but she did require piano lessons, cooking lessons, sewing lessons, art lessons, and calligraphy lessons at various points. However, she also went beyond her own talents. Nevada famously set rules such as no drivers licenses for the boys until they obtained the rank of Eagle Scout. She didn’t just want her children to develop her talents. Nevada wanted them to value achievement more generally. And her projects were not always top down. Any of the children could enlist her time and creativity in their own interests, where they could always expect Nevada’s trademark effort. Whether planning creative dates, going over the top with school assignments, or competing in the stake youth olympics, her creativity would help transform big ideas into executable plans and, ultimately, achievements everyone was proud to display. Holiday traditions were especially cherished in Nevada’s home. They were built around her pillars of talent, creativity, sharing, and perhaps most important, scale. At some point Nevada must have studied Henry Ford’s theories of manufacturing because she well understood specialization lines to mass produce holiday goodies with her children. The family would produce hundreds of homemade tamales, cinnamon rolls, orange rolls, cookies, peppermints, caramels, taffy, etc. to distribute to neighbors, friends, and anyone else imaginable - even including paper route customers. Each plate of goodies was meticulously inspected by Nevada before it could go out. Generally, there were two points of inspection: the first when it was originally plated; and the second just before it was delivered in case anything was tweaked during the car ride. Most notable was the immaculate icing artistry on each individual cookie. Nevada served so many others with her talents and generosity. She and Ray opened their home to a number of graduate students while attending Thunderbird School of Global Management, as well as foreign exchange students participating in various programs. She graciously mentored so many people individually, who sought her out for her talents much in the same way she sought out her own mentors. She served in countless church callings, both formally and informally. And each one she approached with the same creativity, determination and quest for excellence that she brought to her Make-a-Mix endeavor. Organist. Primary Presidency. Young Women's Presidency. Institute teacher. In 1995, Nevada returned to teaching. She started as a permanent substitute before becoming a family and consumer sciences teacher at Centennial High School in Peoria, Arizona, where she continued to share her evolving talents and passions until her retirement in 2019. Nevada’s earlier pioneering had placed her ahead of the curve, and as the curriculum became less gendered she had no problems adapting. She loved to stay busy, even in retirement. Nevada was always on the go up to her final days. What is also remarkable about Nevada is the relationships she maintained with so many who crossed her path. She kept in touch with her sorority sisters from so long ago, and with the mentors she sought out when she started her family. She kept in touch with the graduate students who stayed in her home. She kept in touch with all of her own mentees. She impacted hundreds of thousands of people through her endeavors - thousands personally. All of those who knew her would praise her exceptional talents. But, much like the impression that stuck with Ray’s little sister, what everyone likely remembers and values most about Nevada is her generosity and friendship. Finally, from the moment they met, Nevada never stopped loving Ray. And when Ray passed in 2002 she was devastated. While it’s true she persisted, as she always did, it is also true she did so with a lonely heart. Nevada suffered so much loss in her life, yet her belief in the gospel of Jesus Christ has been an enduring comfort. She pursued His discipleship with the same determination, and with the hope of being reunited with those she loved and lost. Nevada is survived by her eight children: Brett Harward, Staci Walton, Matt Harward, Chad Harward, Amy Barry, Pepper Harward, Brooke Clark, and Kristen Genchi; 37 grandchildren; and 19 great grandchildren. Services: Close family and friends will gather in Phoenix, Arizona in April to place Nevada’s ashes and memorialize her next to her sweetheart, and to celebrate both her incredible life and her reunion with Ray. In lieu of sending flowers, the family suggests honoring Nevada’s legacy of mentorship by making a donation to Centennial High School, who has graciously set up a memorial fund in Nevada’s name that will go toward its Family and Consumer Sciences endeavors. Centennial High School 14388 N. 79th Ave. Peoria, AZ 85381 (note Nevada Harward memorial fund on any checks)