D300 science fair founder shared passion for music and education
For more than five decades, Robert Hart shared his passion for science and education with students across Community Unit District 300.
Hart, for whom the district’s annual science fair is named, died Monday at home in Algonquin. He was 86.
Those who knew Hart say he inspired educators and shaped young minds with his meticulous instruction, nurturing personality and supportive efforts.
As the district’s science coordinator in the early 1980s, Hart put together science training kits for all of the elementary school science teachers and held a weeklong training session, said Terri Dawson, a science teacher at Jacobs High School who started teaching in the district in 1978.
“It was science in a box,” Dawson said. “I think that’s why our science was so strong: he developed the curriculum and trained teachers on the science.”
A veteran of World War II, Hart began in District 300 in 1953 and spent many years as a physics and chemistry teacher at the former Dundee Community High School. In 1957, Hart founded the Illinois Junior Academy of Science, from which the current science fair grew.
Although he retired in 1987, he remained heavily involved with the district, including as a judge for the annual science fair that the school board named the Robert E. Hart D300 Science Fair in 1997.
Beyond the classroom, Hart and his wife of 60 years, Alice, provided day care for children of many District 300 teachers. Paula Anderson, a special-education teacher at Jacobs, said Hart also passed on his love of science and music to the children for whom he and his wife cared.
“When Bob showed the kids how to do something, like how to plant a seed, he didn’t tell them to just dig a hole and put a seed in it,” Anderson said. “He told them, first you need to dig a hole that’s six inches deep and the seed needs to be in this direction. He was meticulous, patient, kind and soft-spoken.”
The open road was often the classroom for Hart’s four children, said Ann Elliot, Hart’s third child.
Elliot said the summer trips provided great childhood memories.
“Mom would pack the trailer the day we got out of school and we would go wherever dad was taking classes,” Elliot said. “We’d park for six weeks wherever he was taking summer classes. We spent a lot of time in New Hampshire. He got a master’s degree there.”
Most of all, Elliot said, her father was devoted to his wife.
“The devotion to my mother and the care that he had for her and how much he loved her … you would not see anyone do anything better for their spouse,” Elliot said.
A memorial service and lunch will be held at 11 a.m. Saturday, Feb. 4, at Christ Church of Oak Brook. A private burial at a later date will be in Abraham Lincoln National Cemetery in Elwood. Memorials can be made to Feed My Starving Children.