National Clothesline

Before he died of complications due to kidney cancer on Sunday, June 18, Carl Gardner faced his declining health with the same grace and faith that carried him through the rest of his life.

Gardner, 52, who worked as a field representative and sales consultant for the Laidlaw Corporation, was the kind of person who preferred to live by example.

Many of Gardner’s co-workers from Laidlaw visited him at home during his final days, including Mike Achin, the company’s director.

“He was very eloquent about the end of his life,” he said. “A lot of people might be in a bad mood, feeling sorry for themselves, but he showed us how to live out life to the end gracefully. He said he didn’t want us to feel sorry for him. He might have been in a lot of pain, but he said he has a great family and a lot of support from his church and he had faith in where he’s going.”

Now that he is gone, the company knows there is a huge void to fill. To honor him, they created The Carl Gardner Laidlaw Scholarship that will send a drycleaning student to the IFI School of Dry Cleaning Technology each year.

The gesture is appropriate, as Gardner taught hundreds of cleaners how to sharpen their spotting skills over the years.

Even before he became an instructor, he was an advocate of drycleaning education and industry trade affiliation.

After graduating from York Suburban High School in 1972, he completed training at the American Institute of Laundering (which became IFI) in Joliet, IL, in 1974.

Next, he worked alongside his father, James, at the family’s plant, Schmuck’s Cleaners, in York, PA. He bought the business in 1991.

Six years later, he sold the company and started working for Laidlaw as a field representative. At that time, he deeply enjoyed giving help to cleaners located in Pennsylvania, Ohio, Maryland, Delaware, and Virginia, which certainly gave his cars’ odometers a healthy workout.

“I averaged about 50–60,000 miles a year,” he said during a recent interview with IFI. “We went through cars, that’s for sure. In my travels, I’ve been able to tell an IFI cleaner from a non-IFI cleaner pretty easily.”

According to Gardner, the non-IFI cleaners were the ones who were reluctant to organize their spotting board chemicals and keep up with the changing times.

Gardner, on the other hand, constantly tried to keep current with the industry’s technology and events. In fact, he recently recertified as an IFI trainer so that anyone who participated in one of his spotting seminars would earn points toward Award of Excellence certifications.

“The Award of Excellence is a step in the right direction,” he explained. “Requiring any Award of Excellence cleaner to successfully remove those stains on the stain swatch was a great idea. It is telling that so many cleaners were unable to pass that test because it shows how much we can improve.”

One of the things that made Gardner special is that he was just as willing to provide help to others when he was “off the clock.”

Some of the extracurricular activities he started included a Coats for Kids project in Central Pennsylvania and the annual golf outing that benefits the Special Olympics of York County. Last year, he organized a trip to New Orleans in order to help the victims of Hurricane Katrina.

As a man with a firmly-rooted religious faith, Gardner’s generosity of spirit didn’t just extend to the drycleaning industry. He was an active member of Living Word Community Church, where he was a Sunday school teacher for Treasure Park and was involved with Dads of Destiny and the Promise Keepers.

He also took part in five missionary trips to Guatemala to perform construction work for the local community. During one trip, he and members of his church poured a foundation for a large gymnasium for the children.

“They have a rainy season there and the kids can’t get out and play, so now they have this big gym,” he said during his recent interview. “One of the guys who went with me on that trip and I were talking the other day and he said that building was going to be around for a long time. That made me feel good.”

Because he was often on the road or engaged in community support projects, Gardner didn’t have as much time as he would have liked to spend with his own family. Yet, the time he did share with them proved to be all the more precious.

“The only regret I have is not being around more for my kids,” he added. “Perhaps that’s why I got so involved with the Sunday school kids. We’d have parties here at the house and they could play football in the yard. We also took the kids on trips to River Valley Ranch [a rodeo camp in southern Pennsylvania] and they had such a good time.”

Gardner was the husband of Cynthia R. (Meals) Gardner of York, with whom he observed their 26th wedding anniversary on August 11, 2005.

In addition to his wife, he is survived by parents James and Mary (Schmuck) Gardner of York; daughter Ginny and her husband, Kevin Smeltzer, of York; two sons, Andrew Gardner of Phoenix, AZ, and Elliot Gardner of York; two granddaughters, Clea and Tylar; two brothers, Thomas and his wife, Linda Gardner, of Dallastown, and James and his wife, Sharon Gardner, of Loganville; and two nieces and two nephews.

Memorial contributions may be made to Living Word Community Church Missions, 2530 Cape Horn Road, Red Lion, PA 17356; to Kidney Cancer Association, 1234 Sherman Ave., Evanston, IL 60202; or to Caring Bridge, 2440 Federal Drive, Suite 100, Eagan, MN 55122.

Dennis M. Weber, chief executive officer of Irving Weber Associates, Inc., passed away on May 29 in Smithtown, NY.

Weber was born in Bronx, NY, on January 4, 1940. At an early age, he joined his father, Irving Weber, who was then the endorsed insurance broker for the Neighborhood Cleaners Association. Together they developed the agency into the largest writer of business insurance and workers’ compensation for drycleaners in the nation. He rose to vice president of the agency in 1984, then to president in 1990, a position he held until late last year.

One of his functions at Irving Weber Associates, Inc., was the adjudication of major losses. Over the years he assisted many drycleaners in returning to business when they sustained a total loss.

In addition, during his tenure at Irving Weber Associates he was also a volunteer firefighter with the Dix Hill Fire Department. Before retiring from the Dix Hills Fire Department he achieved the position of Fire Chief.

He was also involved in the development of a successful workers’ compensation safety group in the drycleaning industry, a program that saved participants millions of dollars on premiums since its inception.

Weber leaves behind a wife to whom he was married to for 50 years, three children and eight grandchildren.