Religion: Sign Man

DEATH IS ON YOUR TRACK WHERE WILL YOU BE IN ETERNITY?

Such admonitions are familiar to motorists in the East and South, especially in North Carolina and Virginia. Not every one knows that they are mostly the work of one man, Ashby W. Hardy of Petersburg, Va. Traveling roads as far north as Massachusetts, Sign Man Hardy received no outside aid, financial or physical. Some of his thousands of signs—biblical texts and dour injunctions—he painted on board or metal sheets at home, nailed to roadside fences and trees. Others he whitewashed directly on jutting rocks, tin roofs, barns, sheds.

Last week it became known that ill health had forced Sign Man Hardy to give up. In his home State now there are few signs left. Virginia passed an anti-billboard law under which all signs save official markers were removed from within highway rights of way.