ORANGE — The families of the elderly couple killed in a 2016 home invasion say they try to focus on positive memories of their loved ones 10 years after the crime.
The adult children of Thomas Harty and Joanna Fisher say they have various ways of keeping their parents’ memories alive, though the trauma from that time has a way of creeping back.
“Every day we think about them, what they meant to us and what they meant to our families. They were two very unselfish people that didn’t do a lot for themselves, but did a lot for ours,” said Larry Fisher, Joanna’s son from a previous marriage. “We don’t want their legacy to end with how they were horribly killed.”
Harty, 95, was killed on Oct. 5, 2016, in the 581 East River St. home he shared with his 77-year-old wife, Joanna Fisher, who died of her own injuries the following month. Healthcare workers called the authorities after finding Fisher during a regularly scheduled visit at roughly 9 a.m. on Oct. 6.
Athol residents Joshua Hart, 24, and Brittany E. Smith, 28, confessed to the crime during interviews with police after their arrests. Each received two life sentences, to be served consecutively, without the possibility of parole following their jury convictions in 2018.
They wanted to steal the couple’s vehicle to flee as Hart, who had warrants in his home state of Pennsylvania, wanted to avoid jail and Smith did not want to go to drug treatment for a heroin addiction. The two had targeted a home with an older model vehicle that did not have tracking technology. They were arrested in Virginia days later.
“It’s been a horrible 10 years for our families,” Larry Fisher said. “It’s affected our families mentally, physically and socially.”
Still, he said, relatives do their best to think instead about all the good his mother and stepfather did for their community, and how that community responded during the families’ time of need.
“There was people getting in touch, wanting to help, for months and months after,” Larry Fisher recalled. “It’s nice to have community helping out, and not just from around here, but from everywhere.”
Joanna Fisher was born in New Haven, Connecticut, and graduated from East Haven High School in 1957. She married Harty in 1998.
She got a state grant in the 1990s and founded Valuing Our Children, an organization dedicated to addressing the needs of youngsters; the Pioneer Junior Women’s Club; and The Oracle, a now-defunct volunteer weekly newspaper in Orange. Larry said his mother’s photograph now hangs in Valuing Our Children’s office in Athol.
Kathleen Koonz, one of Joanna’s daughters, previously said her mother was an elementary school aide when the family moved to the area in 1970.
“Ten years have passed since the senseless murders of our mother and stepfather, but they continue to live on through the love they gave and the many lives they touched in our community,” Koonz said in a statement. “They were generous, compassionate and deeply devoted people who brought kindness, wisdom and joy to all. Their legacy isn’t defined by the circumstances of their deaths but by the goodness they brought into the world and the lasting impact they made on others.”
Joanna Fisher was named the sixth recipient of the Barbara Corey Award by the North Quabbin Community Coalition in 2003. The coalition’s most prestigious award honors a person who has made a significant impact on the quality of life in the region.
Thomas Harty was still an avid hiker, despite being 95 years old. In fact, he was wearing a pair of brown Hi-Tec hiking boots when he was killed and one of his sons, Donald Harty, acquired them through a four-year ordeal that started after the trials. They had been taken into evidence by the Northwestern District Attorney’s Office. The younger Harty used them to climb Maine’s Mount Katahdin — one of his father’s favorites — in July 2023.
Donald Harty wore the boots on a guided trek to the top of the U.S. Capitol rotunda in April, something his father had wanted to do with his Boy Scout troop decades ago. The younger Harty, who now lives in Maine, arranged the climb with U.S. Sen. Susan Collins.
“It was amazing, going up inside the dome,” he said.
Donald Harty was planning to bring the boots to the Grand Canyon, where his father had led yearly excursions, but that trip was canceled due to the recent deadly flooding there.
The elder Harty’s hiking career began in 1927 with his first climb up Mount Monadnock in New Hampshire, some seven years after he was born in Barre on Oct. 27, 1920. He later served in the U.S. Navy as an electrician’s mate aboard a minesweeper stationed at Chesapeake Bay, Maryland, from 1943 to 1946.
He spent much of his civilian career at Rodney Hunt Co. and was working part-time as a salesman for Donbeck Sales, a company founded by Donald and his wife, at the time of his death. Donald once said his father’s visits with his clients also served as “real fertile recruiting ground for people to go to the Grand Canyon with him.”
Harty also established the Let Them Shine Fund, which provides financial help for Athol Area YMCA memberships for disadvantaged children, specifically those from single-parent households. His son estimates the elder Harty supported roughly 200 memberships over the years.
“As you can imagine, it was devastating,” Donald Harty said of his father’s death, “but we’ve tried not to dwell, but just keep their legacy going.”
He mentioned that the Fisher-Harty Greenway was recently dedicated along the Millers River in Athol in the couple’s memory.
