T. Jean Gardner

Danville - Teresa Jean Gardner, 83, passed away at home on Saturday January 4, 2025.

T. Jean Gardner was a profound advocate for her family, friends, and the Danville Blue Devils. She had a spirit that was larger than life and a heart that withstands the test of time. As her siblings, nieces and nephews from three generations, and best friends gathered around her chair, stories were told with the wit, charisma, and laughter than only Jean Gardner knew how to share. Maybe you remember her as the one who told the referee at the Twins’ basketball game to fix his eyesight and was consequently thrown out of the stands? Or perhaps as the “Mean Jean” flipping eggs at the Golf Course on Sunday morning? Even still as simply as “the one in the chair”? No matter your relation, Jean was your biggest champion, loudest cheerleader, and most loyal fan. Her wild heart and fierce courage nurtured a community that magnified her loving gift of serving and connecting.

Jean was the household historian, the ancestor of tradition, and a matriarch of the Gardner family. She was an heirloom; a great treasure whose spirit, laughter, wisdom and curiosity lives on in each life she touched. As the sun sets in the West, we find solace in the surety that T. Jean Gardner is driving her yellow Pontiac Catalina with the top down and smooth notes of Barbara Streisand on the radio, down Ohio Rt 62 to her forever home.

Jean is preceded in death by parents Thomas and Dorothy (Nommay) Gardner, brother Thomas Jr. Gardner, and sister Judith and James Colopy.  She is survived by siblings, Joseph (Charlotte) Gardner, Larry (Jess) Gardner, Mimi (William) Durbin, sister-in-law Janet (Thomas Jr.) Gardner and numerous nieces, nephews, great nieces and nephews, great-great nieces and nephews, and one great great-great nephew.

In lieu of flowers, donations can be made in honor of Jean Gardner to Gentiva Hospice at 112 Harcourt Rd. No. 3, Mount  Vernon, Ohio 43050 or Creative Living for the Physically Disabled through Creative Living Donations at creative-living.org.

Visitation will be from 9 – 10:00 am Saturday, January 11, followed by the Mass of the Resurrection at St. Luke Catholic Church, Danville.  Father Jim Colopy will officiate. Interment will follow at St. Luke Cemetery. The Fischer Funeral Home in Danville is handling arrangements.