Through it all, Jane Gardner showed us that the unvarnished truth works best
Journalist who fought four types of cancer invited us all to follow her journey
“Friends, it’s hard to say goodbye.”
That’s how Jane Gardner began her final Facebook post on July 10, the day before she died of cancer.
The celebrated and beloved TV anchor fought four different types of cancer — breast, skin, ovarian, lung — over two decades, a journey she invited an entire community to take a front-row seat to, in hopes of educating, inspiring, and giving not just hope, but hard reality.
Jane, 68, was the consummate journalist, and one of the first female anchors in the region, having worked at both WVEC and WTKR in Hampton Roads, and earlier, as a broadcaster in Roanoke and Richmond. Her years as a medical journalist taught her an important lesson: The unvarnished truth works best.
That honesty helped me and a whole community of readers. When I worked at The Virginian-Pilot, I was assigned to do a story chronicling her treatment for ovarian cancer in May 2015. Jane and I had been competing health reporters at one time, and she was considered the quintessential medical journalist of the region.
I felt intimidated. Would she tell me the questions I forgot to ask? Explain medical terms I didn’t know? Try to evade questions she didn’t want to answer?
But there was none of that. She welcomed me graciously, made me feel comfortable, and shared her vast knowledge of her own medical story. She also opened her heart to the emotions of taking on yet another cancer fight.
If there was a question I may have forgotten, she would always deftly weave it into our conversation.
My husband, Steve Earley, at the time a VirginianPilot photographer, was also assigned the story. We spent hours shadowing Jane and her husband,
Gary, in hospital waiting rooms, in chemotherapy units, CT scan rooms, and in doctors’ offices to hear what the latest blood report would yield.
There were times when a nurse or doctor would look at us — me with a notepad and my husband with a camera — and whisper to Jane, “You don’t want them here for this,” particularly if a hard conversation was in the offing.
She would always explain that if she was there, we were there too.
Even when she was at her most vulnerable, undergoing an intense or painful procedure, she would turn to Steve and say “Are you getting this?”
As sober as those settings could be, she always managed to make it uplifting. Chin up, shoulders back, she took everything in stride, asked lots of questions, and always managed to make someone laugh. There would be talk of the latest news, the journalism industry, the trips she and Gary were planning, memories of TV reporting escapades, and of course, medical stories.
Ever the journalist, she kept impeccable notes in a small notebook, did exhaustive research, sought second and third opinions, bounced ideas off her vast network of friends and family. Her postings on Facebook were as elegant as she was.
She never said no to a request. When we invited ourselves to watch her hairstylist shave her head on the balcony of her Norfolk condo — sure to be an emotional moment — she quickly agreed. She invited a close friend, made green chili hamburgers, then broke out the champagne when her head was smoothly bald.
There was laughter and joking and stories, but also a bit of sadness. She never held back those feelings, knowing they would help someone else.
“I tell myself it’s just hair, but when I pass a mirror, I say, ‘Oh, that’s right, I have cancer.’ It’s not my favorite look.”
Even with her cleanshaven head, she looked stunningly beautiful. Dozens of people shared their own bald and beautiful heads when the photos ran in The Virginian Pilot with the social media hashtag #StandWithJane.
She widened her stage in whatever way she could, through TV appearances, speaking to clubs, and meeting people one-onone. WHRO and the Chrysler Museum invited her to give a presentation about her cancer journey, a lively talk she called “Live Each Day.”
It was a motto she fostered in every presentation, and emphasized when cancer recurred: “You ask what I want them to know about my spirit … I’m going to try to practice resiliency. Be as true as I can be to my truest and best self, and live every moment. Sing the body electric, I think Walt Whitman said.”
She also spoke to new medical students on white coat day at Eastern Virginia Medical School, where she worked in public relations after her TV career.
Wherever she went, people recognized her, and came up to her sharing their own story, thanking her for her openness. She made friends in minutes, and hundreds of people followed her Facebook postings, where she shared both victories and setbacks.
“She has unshakable loyalty to the people she loves,” said Barbara Ciara, anchor and managing editor at WTKR-3 TV, who’s known Jane since the 1980s. “She supports your projects, your dreams, she uplifts you in low moments,” Days after her death, Ciara still talks about her in the present tense.
She remembers when her own mother died suddenly of pancreatic cancer, Jane and Gary were in San Francisco. They headed straight to Pittsburgh to be with Ciara at the funeral. “She stood by me and held me up.”
Wherever Jane was, Gary was, too. Gary met Jane when she was just 19 years old, and their 50-year love was ever present through our time together. No matter the setting, they were holding hands, exchanging knowing glances, sharing a laugh, and leaning into each other for support.
Gary may have been a bit reserved in sharing, but he knew Jane would be unstinting in letting others know her own reality.
“It was never anything like ‘I’ll tell you about my cancer battle as long as it’s going good, but if it’s not, I won’t,’ ” Gary said in an interview the day after she died. “That was not her way. She believed in informing people. She was not going to lock herself up in a closet and die alone, and not be open about the end, too.”
And so this time, with Jane gone, Gary fills in the last chapter of Jane’s life, with the help of her Facebook postings. He knows she would want people to know.
Since September of 2018, she’d been on an immunotherapy drug, Tagrisso, that was holding at bay her most recent bout with lung cancer, one of the toughest cancers to beat.
“Yes, I have metastatic lung cancer,” she wrote in a Nov. 26, 2018, Facebook post. “But it is getting better. And I did not think that was possible. Monday, at Duke Cancer Center, a CT scan showed that a nodule in my right lung, bright as a pearl on September 11th, looks like a wispy cloud now. There’s less fluid around my lung.”
The medication worked so well, she and Gary were able to travel during the next 15 months. They took cruises and traveled throughout New Mexico, England, Spain, Nova Scotia, Australia, Bali, New Zealand.
An appointment this June at Duke, though, showed something suspicious on her lung again, which led to a PET scan, and then the recommendation for more chemotherapy to beat back the returning cancer.
“Can I do this again?” Jane posted on June 26. “Can this battered old body endure one more go at chemotherapy, knowing it will be for whatever is left of my life.”
Ciara said Jane was well aware of her own mortality, that the pills she’d been taking were all that stood between her and death. She was not surprised that Jane, whom she calls her Steel Magnolia, signed up for another go-round of chemo.
The week before starting, however, it became harder for Jane to breathe. She went to Sentara Norfolk General Hospital on July 8 to have a medical port put in for chemotherapy scheduled to start the next day. While there, a scan showed fluid in her lung.
The fluid was removed, and the next day, Jane began chemotherapy at Virginia Oncology Associates. While they were taking her vitals, they discovered a dangerously low sodium level. Her doctor sent her to the emergency room.
She went to Sentara Leigh Hospital, and was admitted. More fluid had built up, and was once again drained.
She and Gary had discussed end-of-life care many times, and had decided she did not want heroic measures, didn’t want to be intubated, and if a particular treatment didn’t have prospects to make her better, she’d pass. She had a do-not-resuscitate order on file to avoid any CPR attempt.
When a hospice nurse asked Jane on July 10 what her pain level was on a scale of zero to 10, she said 8. “I have never in 20 years of cancer heard her say that,” Gary said. “That was the last time she was fully lucid. I knew if she were feeling that bad, we were approaching the end.”
So did Jane. She posted this on Facebook the same day: “Friends, it’s hard to say goodbye. But 20 years of cancer treatment is all this body can take. I will enter hospice care this weekend. Please know that I love you all.”
That led to hundreds of postings on Facebook: “Rest knowing you have held the lantern high for others,” read one. And another, “We are a kinder and gentler community because of you.”
Plans were made for her to move to Sentara Hospice House in Virginia Beach on Sunday the 12th. She needed to be on a BiPAP machine, which would deliver oxygen to her airways to help her breathe.
She fought the close-fitting face mask to the point where they gave her some morphine.
The night of July 11, she relaxed enough that Gary went home to grab something to eat. A nurse promised him if anything changed for the worse, she would call. Earlier in the day, he had a heartfelt talk with Jane, letting her know how much he loved her, how much she had meant to him over the years. Shortly after he returned to their Norfolk condo, he received a phone call. Jane’s heart rate had dropped.
He rushed back, arriving just minutes before she died.
“I was there,” he said. “I wanted to be there, and I was.”
A day or so before, Jane had given Gary a primer on Facebook. He told her what he planned to write. Two hours after she died, he posted this, shortly after midnight.
“Friends, wanted to let you know that Jane died Saturday night at 10:30. Thank you all for your love, kindness, and good wishes. Please don’t respond to this message. I don’t do FB, am not a social media person, and probably wouldn’t be able to find your message. If you get this message, it’s only because Jane taught me how to do this a couple of days ago, just so I could notify all of you, her wonderful friends.”
The day before she died, I received a gracious email from her, saying goodbye. I am so thankful to her for opening the door to her journey and her soul and her grace. It was her journalistic expertise that prepared her to tell her most powerful story.
“I felt an important part of our job was to help people understand this world we live in,” she once said. “Nothing tells a story better than a first-person account. So as I go through this journey, I felt that maybe I could help people understand what it’s like and maybe learn a little something from it. I know people who get sick and want to just hide. I learned that I need everybody. I need my sweet husband, but I also need my friends and my neighbors and this community that, back in 1978 when I came to Channel 13 as a very young reporter, adopted me. People are so kind and caring if you let them be. And I take such comfort from their support. That is good tonic, it’s good medicine.”
It was medicine that never failed.
Elizabeth Simpson Earley worked at The Virginian-Pilot for 30 years, and now works in public relations for Children’s Hospital of The King’s Daughters.