BLUE HILL — Jean Elizabeth Gardyne Webster, 92, passed away peacefully on March 14, 2017, at Parker Ridge, Blue Hill, with family and friends at her side. She was the last Gardyne of her generation.
Jean was born at home on June 6, 1924, in North Troy, Vt., to Nellie Marion (Rice) and Harvey R. Gardyne, the third of four children. During the Depression, her father worked steadily as supervisor at the Blair Veneer Mill and so her family of six squeaked by with a little less hardship than many. Jean watched as her father passed on a few dollars to out-of-work neighbors to tide them over and did not forget his quiet example.
She graduated from Green Mountain College with a Secretarial Science degree in 1944, a campus with more women than men due to the war overseas. After college, she left her small town for the big city of Boston, and joined the post-war workforce. She lived on Commonwealth Avenue and Beacon Hill, soaked up the culture and bicycled on Cape Cod and along the Charles. Her many roommates became lifelong friends.
When she needed a ride home one Christmas, a friend gave her the number of another Boston-area Vermonter heading north. That long car ride introduced her to Karl Webster, her future husband, who had grown up down the road in Orleans.
Karl and Jean started out their married life in a Spartan trailer in State College, Pa., where Karl was getting his master’s degree in mechanical engineering at Penn State. They set up homes after that in Durham, N.H., Wolfeboro, N.H., York Harbor and Orono before retiring in 1990 to their land in West Brooksville and joining the community on the peninsula.
Jean and Karl shared a love of sailing and wooden boats, and they spent many days cruising around Great Bay in New Hampshire and Penobscot Bay in Maine on the Monday and then the Tuesday with their family and friends. Together they built their cabin overlooking the Bagaduce River in the late 1960s, and later their retirement home in the same location.
Jean was forever grateful for the Works Progress Administration’s decision to build a tennis court in her small town in Vermont’s Northeast Kingdom, where she taught herself to play and began her lifelong passion for this game. Tennis (as well as cribbage, crosswords and Scrabble!) brought out her friendly but fierce competitive spirit, and she considered Billie Jean King to be her role model. Jean was proud of every trophy and although she didn’t think her game was flashy, she prided herself on being a solid and consistent doubles partner. She organized years of tennis clinics at summer camps and town courts and taught crowds of kids who loved her approach to learning the game. Jean was honored by Green Mountain’s invitation to join the college’s Athletic Hall of Fame, and she was so happy to watch her grandsons pick up rackets and continue Gamma’s legacy.
Jean had Type O blood, one of the universal donor types. Throughout her life she lived according to that philosophy, donating her time to help out in whatever way she could, usually behind the scenes: driving people to appointments, running the Surplus Food program, serving on multiple town committees, dropping off meals, listening over a cup of tea and scones, volunteering for Habitat for Humanity and sending notes and prayers to friends in their time of sorrow and small checks in support of their dreams. Her wholehearted kindness, generosity and counsel will be remembered by many.
A lifelong Democrat (inspired by Eleanor Roosevelt, the New Deal and Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter), she volunteered for a long line of local, state and national campaigns. Her deep faith found its home in many churches, lastly at St. Francis Episcopal Church in Blue Hill. Here, she was an active member of the congregation, serving on the Outreach Committee, and volunteering at the Church Fair until just a few years ago, especially for the Junk for Jesus table.
Jean relished her Scottish heritage, from the poetry of Robert Burns to the sound of the pipes, and held wonderful memories of her trips to Scotland to visit her ancestral home of Gardyne near Arbroath with her daughters and later with Karl.
She is survived by her husband of 64 years, Karl S. Webster Jr., Laconia, N.H., daughter, Susan Webster (Bruce Fowler), Portland, Maine, daughter Anne Webster, San Luis Obispo, Calif., grandsons Samson Fowler and Liam Fowler, Portland, Maine, and her extended family in Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Florida and California.
Her family would like to acknowledge Jean’s circle of community on and off the peninsula and at Parker Ridge, all of whom surrounded Jean with friendship, love, care, kindness and support. A service in celebration of Jean’s life will be held in Blue Hill in the summer of 2017. As she requested, her ashes will reside at Pleasant View Cemetery, Orleans, Vt. To honor Jean, please consider making a donation in her name to: Nichols Day Camp, Blue Hill,http://www.nicholsdaycamps.org/ and/or The Tree of Life Food Pantry, Blue Hill, http://treeoflifepantry.org/.
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