Farewell tour
TRAILBLAZING PAPD CHIEF SET TO RETIRE
A Port Authority Police Department trailblazer is retiring after 26 years of service — but Norma Hardy, the department’s first woman chief, never saw herself as a role model.
“It didn’t dawn on me until someone else said it,” said Hardy, 58. “I just thought of myself as a Port Authority police officer.
“I tell everyone, ‘I am me. I just do me,’” she said, shocked by how a new generation of cops — particularly women officers — want to take photos with her and mine her storied career for a few nuggets of wisdom.
“Now everyone wants to hear from me,” she said. “That’s incredible. I’m just glad I can help them.”
On Monday, scores of Port Authority police officers, active and retired, will flock to the Port Authority building at Lincoln Tunnel to bid farewell to Hardy, who had the distinction of being named the department’s first black woman inspector and the first female chief.
The Army National Guard member and city EMT joined the Port Authority in 1992 — just 16 weeks before the 1993 World Trade Center bombing.
The fresh-faced officer underwent a baptism of fire that afternoon, when all the lights flickered out at the World Trade Center and smoke began filling its underground arteries moments after she and her partner corralled a group of truants caught fighting on the PATH train.
“We were in the middle of calling their parents when the bomb went off,” Hardy remembered. “There was all this thick, acrid black smoke. We were trying to use the flashlight, but the light just bounced back at us.”
Stuck in the dark with a group of terrified, mewling teens, Hardy took charge and led the children to safety — as well as any lost commuters they found along the way.
”I was just trying to keep them all together,” she remembered. “They were all crying and one was hyperventilating. One kept yelling ‘We’re going to die!’ and I told them, ‘We’re not going to die today. We’re going to get out of here.’”
After wandering around in the dark for what seemed like hours, Hardy and her partner saw a sliver of light reflecting from a car’s taillight cover. Soon they found a safe exit out of the World Trade Center parking garage.
Once the teens realized they were safely above ground, they ran off.
“I’m thinking they’ve all become model citizens and never cut school again,” Hardy joked.
Hardy began her career at the Port Authority patrolling the Midtown bus terminal. Her duties sent her to the World Trade Center, the PATH trains that snake between New York and New Jersey, and then back to the WTC — where she was assigned when terrorists leveled the Twin Towers on Sept. 11, 2001.
She was off that fateful morning, but immediately made her way to lower Manhattan. She remained at the site, mired in rescue and recovery efforts, until November, when she suffered a respiratory problem and had to be pulled from her post.
As she tried to come to grips with the massive loss of life, Hardy turned to a hobby
that has always given her peace — poetry.
The result was the poem “The Men,” which has these opening lines:
I’ve met stronger men I’m sure I just don’t remember when With barreled chests and big strong arms To carry our brothers in I wish my shoulders now were even more widely spread
so I could hold the grief we bear
and not waver from the
dread
The powerful words came to Hardy as she watched the recovery efforts. She wrote everything down on napkins and pieced them together at PATH headquarters when her shift was over.
“I thought it was something I was doing for myself until one of the officers I was with read it and started crying,” she remembered. ‘He told me, ‘You have to share this.’”
The poem became wildly popular with first responders and was read at several memorials held over the next year.
Hardy, who raised her nieces after her brother died, sprinted up the ranks over the next few years, becoming the first black woman to be named inspector in 2011 and the department’s first woman assistant chief in 2013.
She’s currently the chief of ground transportation for the Port Authority Police Department, overseeing officers on the George Washington Bridge, Lincoln Tunnel and Holland Tunnel.
Hardy never liked to lead from on high, and was often seen right next to her cops, no matter the situation, officials said.
She only had one mandate for her officers: They had to be able to look at themselves in the mirror every morning.
“They should always have integrity and always have empathy,” she said. “If you can do that every time you put on the uniform, that’s half the battle.”
At last count, there were about 200 women in the Port Authority Police Department — nearly four times as many as the 54 on the job when Hardy joined.
“You had obstacles,” Hardy remembered. “There were people thinking that women couldn’t do the job. There were still a few old timers around who thought like that. But once they saw that you could hold your own and they didn’t have to hold your hand and take care of you, you were able to get along with them.
“I think I changed a couple of minds,” she said, smiling.