Gloria Iffie Brown

Gloria Brown rests eternally with her Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, after passing away on December 29, 2021. She died peacefully at her residence at Linden House Assisted Living in Charlottesville. She was 94 at the time of her death.

Gloria was the daughter and youngest of six children of Albert Henry Smith and Louise Nussbeck. She grew up in the Heights, a German American community in Houston, Texas where she was born on April 10, 1927. After attending the parochial school of Immanuel Lutheran Church, she attended John H. Reagan High School where she graduated in 1944. After two years of working, she enrolled at St. John’s Lutheran Junior College in Winfield, Kansas where she studied to become an elementary school teacher. Upon graduating in 1948, she accepted a call to teach first grade at Zion Evangelical Lutheran Church in Fort Wayne, Indiana.

While teaching she met her first husband, Robert B. Gardner, an Army veteran who had enrolled at a technical college in Fort Wayne and was driving a bus for the school. They married in 1950 and moved to Waynesburg, Pennsylvania where she gave birth to their first two children Ann, and Blair, in 1951 and 1952, respectively. They next relocated to Indiana County, Pennsylvania, where their next two children, Robert and Susan were born in 1955 and 1957.

In 1958, the family moved to Ashland, Virginia and settled in a small home on Yankeetown Road near Patrick Henry High School. Gloria remained in her home at that location, a place she treasured, and the gathering place for neighborhood children, for 59 years. During that time, she and Robert had their final child, Amy, in 1969. After his death in 1977, she raised her youngest daughter as a single mother and built an entire new set of friends around Amy’s activities in school and the Ashland community. She liked to joke that Amy’s friends had difficulty grasping that she was old enough to be their grandmother.

In 1983, she married James Brown, a widower with three children to whom she became a second mother. Two of those children, Danita Tiller and David Brown, survive her as do each of her children with her first husband. During her years with Jim, Gloria devoted herself to volunteer work at Ashland Christian Emergency Services (ACES) and Meals on Wheels whose recipients she noted were sometimes younger than herself. She was recognized by Governor Douglas Wilder in 1994 for her countless hours of volunteering. She and Jim continued to live on Yankeetown Road until they entered assisted living in Mechanicsville in 2017. Jim passed away shortly thereafter. Gloria relocated to Charlottesville in March 2021 to be closer to Amy.

Gloria found happiness not only in the lives and accomplishments of her children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren, but also in the relationships with her first husband’s six siblings and their spouses. They and their children, her 17 nieces and nephews, remained close to her for her entire life. The family reunions she attended with the Gardner’s in locations from Oregon to Vermont were occasions of great joy for her.

In addition to her role as a mother and devoted wife, she was the last founding member of Holy Cross Lutheran Church, now the Ashland campus of Trinity Lutheran Church. She served her congregation in numerous roles including as organist through the 1960’s and 1970’s. She claimed no special understanding of the theological doctrines of the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod into which she was born, lived, and died, but she believed that Jesus Christ loves all, a love that she was always happy to share with a smile and a warm embrace.

Visitation will occur at Nelsen Funeral Home, on Monday, January 3, 2022, between 4:30 PM and 7:30 PM. A funeral service will be conducted at Trinity Lutheran Church on Ashcake Road in Ashland on Tuesday, January 4 at 10:00 AM. A private burial service at Signal Hill Cemetery in Hanover will be conducted on Wednesday.