Joan was the only child of Elmer Edward and Monta Faye (Bowers) Young. She was born in Windsor, Missouri, January 28, 1931. She spent the first five years of her elementary schooling in Long Beach, California but spent the rest of her youth in Missouri graduating from Windsor High School in 1948. She was a member of the National Honor Society, on the sports cheering team “Razzerettes” and served on the Staff of both the “Shawnette” newspaper and “Shawneeola” year book. She was given the DAR Good Citizenship Award in her senior year of H.S. She received a scholarship to attend Kansas City Business College and Achieved her Advanced Secretarial Certificate beginning her career as private secretary to the V.P. of W.S. Dickey Clay Mfg. Co. in Kansas City. In later years Joan earned Sophomore level college credits thru the SUNY CLEP program.
While in Kansas City, Joan met and married Gordon Richard Brown of Morgan City, LA, a graduate of the University of Kansas, Lawrence, KS who was an ROTC First Lt. awaiting Air Force active duty orders. They had one child, a son Richard Kendall brown. On active duty Gordon flew the B-36 and the B-47 SAC bombers finally receiving orders while stationed at Little Rock AFB, AR for C-123 training with an assignment to Vietnam. In 1963 after having been in Vietnam for only 20 days, Capt. Brown volunteered to fly as co-pilot on a low level flare drop mission to aid allied ground units. He was a fatality of enemy ground fire when the plane was shot down while flying to aid allied ground forces 65 miles south of Saigon in enemy held territory. Captain Brown in interred at Arlington National Cemetery, VA.
In 1964, Joan met USAF Captain Ronald Eugene “Gene” Gardner thru mutual matchmaking friends. Gene’s bachelor status quickly eroded and they were married in the same Little Rock AFB Chapel which previously had seen so much sadness for Joan and Richard. Both Joan’s and Richard’s life began again with renewed hope for a long and loving future with her new military husband. Richard was an over eager step-son who relished anything to do with the military and crew flying like his father Gordon had achieved. Gene Gardner lived up to expectations and proved to be a wonderful husband and father figure for Richard with the marriage lasting almost fifty years.
December 24, 2011 Richard, their unmarried son, who was an employee of the Hillsborough County Florida Property Appraiser’s Office, passed away after having fought a long battle with blood and bone cancer due to the Merkel Cell carcinoma at the age of 60 years.
Colonel Gardner passed away December 5, 2013 of pancreatic cancer after having served in the military for 26 years flying in the B-47 and the B-52’s before going up the chain of command to fulfill staff positions. He served with the Rapid Deployment Task Force and retired from Headquarters United States Central Command at MacDill AFT Tampa, Florida while serving as the J-1 Personnel Director in both organizations. After retirement from the military he accepted the position and served as Hillsborough County Director of the Civil Service Board where he remained in that position for 26 years before retiring at age 77.
Joan served as a military wife volunteer for years in many various capacities at all of the varied Air Forces bases where she accompanied her spouse assignments which gave her extensive experience working with people. She volunteered in various base Family Service Offices to include teaching English classes for foreign born military wives, the Thrift Shop chairmanships, the Airmen’s Attic, the base hospital taking photos of newborns and also holding offices and chairmanships in many different Officers Wives Club Activities.In the mid 50’s during Fire Prevention Week at Davis-Monthan AFB, Tucson, AZ she won first prize for a OWC sponsored base parade float that she designed, produced and acted out as “Mrs. O’Leary and her cow” depicting the Chicago fire fame of past years. Joan took up figure ice skating and golfing where in 1968 she made the listing in Sports Illustrated magazine as the most improved ladies golfer.
With a move to Riverside, CA when Major Gardner left for a year tour of duty at MACV Headquarters, Saigon-Cholon, Vietnam, Joan accepted employment with Riverside County Recorder’s Office where she supervised an indexing department. She also served as the Deputy Registrar of Marriages accepting and recording all marriage licenses issued in the county. She was responsible for accepting birth and death records from the Health Department. She was eventually made the Director of Official Records over the Recording, Indexing, Marriage License and Tax Deed Sales sections. Following sixteen years employment and after working on another new automated Recording system, she retired as the Clerk’s Director of Special Projects.
During her years in the Clerk’s Office Joan began her love or record keeping and researching. It was very satisfying to know that the work she performed daily would go on county permanent record for years to come. After retirement, her love of record keeping and researching to solve a puzzle lead her to much enjoyment doing family genealogy research. She enjoyed working in her herb and flower garden, sewing, needlepoint and quilting making. One of her quilts combining some of her grandmother’s 1940’s hand sewn quilt blocks with her own entitled “Maude, Eliza and me” resulted in attaining a First place ribbon prize in the annual Anna M. Stair Arts and Crafts show held in the downtown Hillsborough County Courthouse in 1991.
Joan is survived by her sister-in-law Carolyn Gardner Millsaps and husband Kenneth; her niece by marriage, Christina Millsaps Keavy and husband Michael; a great niece Clare Aislyn, and great-nephews Max Alexander and Mitchell Aidan Keavy, all of Jupiter, FL.
Stowers Funeral Home, 401 W. Brandon Blvd., is handling the arrangements for private burial with her husband in the Florida National Cemetery, Bushnell, FL.
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