Deceased December 27, 2021

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In Memory

My father, Edwin Gardiner, died on Dec. 27, 2021, following an extended battle with Parkinson’s disease and complications. It is one of the few battles he ever lost, and he was far more of a lover than a fighter.

At Amherst, Ed navigated the challenging pre-med curriculum with aplomb while also playing as a midfielder on the soccer team. True to Amherst’s liberal education traditions, neither athletic exploits nor the pre-professional curriculum defined his time there. In what was perhaps less of a fib than a white lie, when my father first met my mother, Wita, he told her he had been an English major. Plainly, it was not true. But his education was broad enough that he could discuss Camus’ The Stranger and existentialism—and, of course, Robert Frost’s poetry—as if literature or even philosophy had been his educational focus. My mother has occasionally admitted that if she had known then he was a doctor, she might have broken off the relationship before it really began.

But his career was medicine. After earning his M.D. at New York University and training at Massachusetts General as well as New York’s Bellevue Hospital, he persuaded Wita that it would be all right to marry a doctor who was also a poet. After a move to San Diego, he established his practice in urology, centered on Grossmont Hospital. Ed rose to be the hospital’s head of surgery. After that, he was appointed by Gov. Edmund “Jerry” Brown to California’s Board of Medical Quality Assurance.

In retirement, Ed returned to his Amherst roots and became an accomplished and eloquent poet. He and my mother traveled around the world, often with their tandem bicycle in tow. He is survived by Wita Gardiner, the love of his life, and his children, Jacqueline and me.

Michael Gardiner ’85