John Hardon - Early Life

Early Life

John Anthony Hardon was born in 1914 to a devout Catholic family in Midland, Pennsylvania. When he was a year old, his 27 year-old father died in an industrial accident when the scaffolding collapsed under him as he moved to secure a steel beam dangling dangerously over his co-workers. After the accident Hardon was raised by his 26-year old mother Anna (née Jevin) Hardon, who never remarried "out of concern for the influence a possible stepfather might have on her son's vocation." They moved to Cleveland, Ohio, where they lived "in the shadows of the iron and steel mills". John Janaro, a biographer of Hardon, described Anna as "a woman of deep faith, a Franciscan tertiary who embraced her poverty and her difficult circumstances with courage and grace." Anna "attended daily Mass and received Holy Communion" and her home "had sacred pictures, a family holy water font, and a good deal of spiritual conversation." The Hardons could not afford a telephone and "in fact they seldom bought a newspaper."

Hardon was Anna's only child, and she supported him by cleaning offices in Cleveland, often working nights. Janaro reports that as a child Hardon was "willful and self-possessed; he was determined that no one was going to tell him what do do"; but he was soon affected by his mother's devoted example. Hardon would often recall that his mother told him that she "taught him to kneel before he could walk" and the very purpose of knees "are for kneeling to pray before God". When he was four, Anna took him to his first all night vigil at Our Lady of Consolation parish in Carey, Ohio. She made a bed for him on the first pew, and prayed throughout the night on her knees as he slept. At the age of six he was instructed by a Sister Benedicta who told her students "Whatever you ask Our Lord on your First Communion day, you will receive." That same year as he received First Holy Communion Hardon made a request to Jeus, "Make me a priest." Thereafter the young Hardon attended daily Mass with his mother. At the age of eight he received the sacrament of Confirmation calling on the Holy Spirit to give him "the grace of martyrdom."

For added income Hardon's mother took in two young Lutheran girls as boarders. When young Hardon protested that he had to abstain from meat on Friday but the boarders did not, Anna had them get permission from their minister to include them in the fast.