Ida Wilder Hardy arrived in Pompano in 1926 with her new husband, Roland Hardy (a member of a pioneer Pompano family). A graduate of Mercer University in her hometown of Macon, Georgia, Mrs. Hardy soon began to teach at Pompano's new high school.

She remembered that there were only a handful of teachers to cover all the subjects offered in the school" "We were so short of teachers that they had to cut a wall out so I could teach math in one room and typing in another, at the same time."

In the mid-1930s, with the Broward County School Board facing a shortage of funds, it was deemed necessary to reduce the teaching staff. Among the first to be let go were married women, and Mrs. Hardy was one of them.

Although out of a job in Broward County, Mrs. Hardy continued to teach, first as a substitute and then full-time, in Palm Beach County, where she retired in 1947 as an assistant principal at Belle Glade High School.