Veteran news anchor dies after cancer bout

NORFOLK, Va. (AP) — Jane Gardner, a longtime news anchor in the Norfolk television market who shared her battles with cancer with her viewers after she left the air, has died after a fifth bout with the disease. She was 68.

Gary Gardner said Monday that his wife died late Saturday night at Sentara Leigh Hospital. Funeral arrangements are pending.

Gardner, a native of Richmond, first came to Norfolk in the 1970s to work for WVEC, where she became the station’s first female news anchor and medical reporter. WTKR, a competing station, hired her away after about 10 years, The Virginian-Pilot reported. She worked there until 1999, when her health issues surfaced.

Since 1999, Gardner endured breast, skin, ovarian and lung cancer. In June of 2018, she learned for the fifth time that the lung cancer which had been in remission, had returned. She shared her health experiences with those who had watched her work on air.

“This community has been wonderful to me,” she told The

Virginian-Pilot in 2015. “I can’t imagine not letting them into this part of my life after they let me into their living room all those years.”