John Fentress Gardner ’33

John Gardner died July 7, 1998, in Buckley Nursing Home in Greenfield, Mass. He was 86.

John attended Mercersberg. After college he took part in bio-dynamic farming while looking after psychiatric patients. During WWII, he served as a Navy corpsman in a hospital he helped build as a Seabee on Guam. Following the war and some studies at Teachers College, Columbia U., he became a faculty chairman at the Waldorf School in Garden City, Long Island, where he built the school from preschool through 12th grade, adding buildings along the way. From 1964-78 he directed the Waldorf Institute for Liberal Education in conjunction with Adelphi U. At his retirement he was awarded an honorary doctorate of letters by the university. He was a lecturer and writer on education, spirituality, and America, producing such essays as "American Heralds of the Spirit: Emerson, Whitman, and Melville," "Education in Search of the Spirit," and "Youth Longs to Know." He was a lifelong student and interpreter of Rudolf Steiner, whose "Calendar of the Soul" he translated. John is survived by his wife of 65 years, Carol, sons Paul and Mark, daughter Elizabeth Lombardi, two grandsons, and a great-grandson. His family and his class will miss this scholar and educator, but his works will live after him.

The Class of 1933