Just got this from Karoly.
I'm grieved to report that Steve Gardner, up until recently a regular contributor to this and the previous forum, owner of Gardner & Associates in Roseville, CA, died this past week, reportedly of stomach cancer.
That's about all I know at this point.
Good man gone.
🙁
That's terrible news. My condolences to the family. I enjoyed his contributions to the site.
That was a sad phone call this morning.
Steve was one of the good guys.
Karoly just let me know.
DAMN IT!!!!!!!!!! **sigh** 🙁 🙁 🙁 🙁 🙁 :u:
That is awful news. I've never had the pleasure of meeting Steve in person, yet I respected him very much as a human being and surveyor, simply from his postings here and elsewhere. He will be deeply missed.
Steve's [msg=82531]last post[/msg] on this board. 🙁
His last post on RPLS: http://www.rpls.com/forums/viewtopic/2/1276295#p2745872
I am among the many that will miss Gardner. His contributions on this site and others has been a pleasure to share.
Peace to you Steve....
Steven Gardner - Last Email....
Subject: Steve...
If you want a sticker for using the correct format, ya need to send me your snail mail address. ?
~Angel
gardner1@comcast.net to me
show details Apr 7
Angel - I was just kidding, I'm a kidder. But if you insist...
Steven A. Gardner
Angel Harness to gardner1
show details Apr 7
Well, we have a hidden rule around here..anyone that hints or asks for a sticker gets one!! We just don't broadcast it. ? Please DON'T spread that around either. LOL!!! I mean if you want to post that you got a sticker it's ok, but just not the "secret". *winks*
Sticker will go out today. ?
~Angel
gardner1@comcast.net to me
Coo! Mum's the word on our little secret. Uh-oh, I hope Wendell doesn't read that and take it the wrong way.
Steven A. Gardner
All of you already knew that "secret" but it was fun to kid around about it with Steve. 😉 He will be missed greatly. When anyone hears anything more, please let us know. Thanks. :love:
H E double hockeysticks, that is terrible news. He really was one of the great ones around here. I think we were the same age, too. Odd that he never mentioned his health problem. He was too busy playing rock music to slow down. Gonna miss that feller.
Really sad news, it's like a family member has left us....
Very sad news.
Surveyor of the Week
I'm pretty sure he was one of the chosen few for that honor in the Arpy Ellis days. Anyone know how to dig it out of the archives and bring it over here?
I know, Cow, he never said. I guess that was who he was also. Damn, we'll miss him. What a good one he was.
So very sorry,
Don
Surveyor of the Week
04-13-08 Steven A. Gardner (nomination) (bio)
The old links don't works.
Surveyor of the Week
Maybe this link will work:
This sux!!!!!! He was a really cool, opinionated smart guy and the world, more specifically the surveying community is a lesser place for the loss of him.
Please update on anything the family needs at this point.
Wow! That just isn't right. Why is it that it's always the good guys that go.
One of the cooler, reasoning heads on the board, if not the coolest. He will be truly missed.
Surveyor of the Week
Yeah, Dave, that worked. Too well...seemed like his obit...way too sad...damn
Don
I'm kind of in shock. Steve is (was) my age, and even though we'd never met, I knew he was just a few miles away in the next county. Just last month I filed a Record of Survey that referenced one of his monuments. I'm stunned.
Condolences to his family and friends.
🙁
Surveyor of the Week
> Thank you, Abe Taylor, for nominating me, a relative newcomer to RPLS, as SOTW. Without further ado, here goes with the autobiography.I was born in 1953 in Cottage Grove, Oregon. My parents were both from Arizona but moved to Oregon when my dad got out of the Army, having served in North Africa and Europe in WWII. He graduated from Oregon State in forestry from which he “branched out” (ha) into surveying, eventually becoming licensed in 4 states as well as a U.S. Mineral Surveyor. My mom couldn’t take the Oregon weather so when I was 3, we moved to Sacramento, CA and my dad went to work for the State Division of Beaches and Parks as a surveyor. After a couple of years of that, he formed a surveying/engineering company called Gardner & Dabel which was the beginning of the company that I now own and operate in Roseville, CA.I started working for my dad on weekends and vacations when I was about 13 and continued to do that more and more through high school. After graduating from El Camino High School in 1971, I went to the University of California in Davis where I received a Bachelor’s Degree in Psychology. I really didn’t think surveying was going to end up being my profession but it is the only job I’ve ever had in my life. A Psych degree is fine and dandy but not that useful without following it up with a law degree or a Masters or PhD. After spending 17 of my 23 years in school, hippie musician seemed the best career choice. I made a somewhat feeble stab at that playing bass in bands in San Francisco and Santa Cruz in 1975-6.Music has been part of life basically forever. I started out playing the piano when I was about 9, inspired by my Aunt Helene who played honky-tonk piano in a band in Arizona. What a character, she had a big hole in her carpet from stomping her foot as she played. When I was 13, piano was no longer cool and my parents bought me a Fender Mustang guitar and little Kalamazoo amp. Wish I still had those things. I didn’t give up on keyboards, though. I got a Hammond organ (which I still have) in high school and played that in a band for awhile. Just a garage band which is about all I’ve ever been in. In college, my roommate bought a cheap bass guitar and quickly realized he had no chance of learning how to play it, so I bought it from him. Bass is fun to play and there are plenty of guitar heroes that need backup. I considered myself a bass player for several years. In 1976, my unemployment ran out in Santa Cruz, and since that comprised most of the income for the 6 people, two dogs and horse that lived at our little two-bedroom hovel, the party was over. Three of us drove from Santa Cruz to Sacramento in that era and among the three of us, we didn’t have 35 cents for the toll to cross the Carquinez Bridge. Luckily, our keyboard player had some postage stamps in his wallet which the bridge people accepted. So, that’s when I started working full-time for my dad’s surveying business until I decided what to do next. That was 32 years ago. For some reason, he thought I had the skills to be a party chief at that point. I don’t think we screwed up too many jobs but I remember almost crying trying to stake a particular curb and gutter job with a right turn lane that transitioned into a bus turnout. This is before calculators much less computers and data collectors. We’re talking T-16 and chain and pencil. We didn’t know that we were doing things the hard way, that was the only way. I’m glad I worked in those horse and buggy times. When you have to get out the trig table book and do long-hand multiplication to reduce a slope distance, you get a pretty good feel for what the computers are doing, unlike many of the people getting into surveying nowadays. I hate those “kids of today” speeches that old guys make, now listen to me.I met my wife-to-be, Kathy in 1978 at a Halloween party where I met all her friends and she met all mine all in one night. We have been inseparable since that night. Not being one to rush into anything, about a year and a half later, we were married on April 26, 1980. We will celebrate 28 years of wedded bliss in a couple of weeks. We didn’t have any kids of our own but we are close to Kathy’s sister’s two teenagers who don’t seem to mind spending time with their old aunt and uncle. The same year we got married, we bought a house in Citrus Heights (Sacto suburb) for 60K. After about 10 years, the traffic noise was such that you couldn’t hear yourself think in the back yard so “quiet” was a priority in finding our new home. In 1991, we bought the house where we are now in Penryn, CA. It’s almost two acres grandfathered in to a 10-acre minimum zone. It has remained rural for the 17 years we’ve been here and the houses that have been built are really nice homes on large lots. Ours is the smallest 4-bedroom house ever built, vintage 1964. We recently had the old tack room (400 sq. ft.) converted into a music room. This afternoon we had our second practice for a fund-raiser deal at a school in Grass Valley next month where our little band is playing. Kathy is the drummer, Katy, a teacher Kathy used to work with is the keyboard/rhythm guitar/co-vocalist, I play guitar and sing and Nino, boyfriend of a student’s mother plays bass. Something like that seems to come up once or twice a year for us and they’re just few and far between enough to make me nervous about doing it. Once the first song’s done, though, I tend to relax and enjoy it. Kind of like golf and the first hole jitters. Kathy started playing drums a few years ago when she noted that the little drum set I had in the living room hadn’t been played for quite a while. I suggested that she try playing it and it turned out that she had a natural knack for it. She plays the way all garage bands want their drummers to play, loud and basic. I attribute her talent for drumming to the training she had as a child learning Hula and Tahitian dancing when her family lived in Hawaii (Her dad was in the Air Force.)Another hobby I have gotten into is winemaking.
