Deborah Key Gardner

Debbie, as she was best known, was born in Surry County, North Carolina on April 5, 1954, to her late parents, Paul Dale Gardner and Katie Key Gardner, who returned with her to their home in Venezuela, where her father worked with British American Tobacco Co. Though she moved with her family to several countries -- Costa Rica, Colombia, Guatemala – she spent her most formative years in Honduras. She lived there from age 8 to 16. There, she and her friends became avid horseback riders when they were not in school at Escuela Internacional Sampedrana. For most of her riding years, “Prince” was her trusted steed. And her tightly knit group of friends rode all over the San Pedro Sula valley and surrounding mountains – until she enrolled in Glade Valley School near Sparta, N.C., for high school.

While she wasn’t exactly an A-plus student, she nonetheless succeeded in making it into Elon College, where she majored in Philosophy and graduated in 1976. In each of these places, she made lifelong friends and has maintained some of these friendships for as many as 60 years. While she was married after college for a time, that marriage ended in divorce, and she had no children of her own – though she could rightly say that all her nieces and nephews, and all their children, some 30 altogether, were her own children. She loved them all so well and so dearly, and they loved her back. She was Aunt Debbie to them all, and every one of them developed a special bond with her because she invested so much of her love and time and even money into each one. She likewise made exceptional efforts to stay in touch with her many Gardner and Key cousins as well as her dear Aunt June (Fulk) of Dobson. When her mother remarried following her father’s death in 1995, she “adopted” her stepfather, Haywood Jordan, who survived for many years after her mother’s death in 2013. She remained closely involved in Jordan’s life until his death in 2019.

She leaves all of them behind with broken hearts, especially her sisters, Dianne Gardner Bruton of Richmond, Va., and Dana (John) Gardner Villalba of Tallahassee, FL, and her brother, Paul Dale (Marian) Gardner Jr., of Orlando, FL, with whom she shared a passion for golf. Also deeply affected by her death were many former colleagues at Medela, a medical equipment company focused on women and their newborn children, where she worked in sales and marketing for 30 years and achieved exceptional results for the company. She retired in 2024 but remained closely connected with many of those colleagues, as she did with her dearest college friends, Leslie Carter of Greensboro and Sue Lauber of New Jersey.

In her brief retirement, she pursued her artistic talents, creating many works that now adorn the homes of her family and friends – paintings and crafts of many kinds.

Heaven is a world of perfect love, the very thing she seemed to be rehearsing for much of her life, especially as her Christian faith matured in her later life.

Visitation is scheduled for 10 a.m. Saturday, Aug. 8, at First Baptist Church of Mount Airy, 714 N. Main St., Mount Airy, NC 27030, followed by a funeral service at 11 a.m. Burial will immediately follow at Oakdale Cemetery. Family and friends are invited to to the church for a time of fellowship and reminiscing at the First Baptist fellowship hall following the interment.

Online condolences may be made at www.haneslineberryfhnorthelm.com