BROWN, Gloria, rests eternally with her Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, after passing away on December 29, 2021. She died peacefully at her residence at Linden House Assisted Living in Charlottesville. She was 94 at the time of her death. Gloria was the daughter and youngest of six children of Albert Henry Smith and Louise Nussbeck. She grew up in the Heights, a German American community in Houston, Texas, where she was born on April 10, 1927. After attending the parochial school of Immanuel Lutheran Church and graduating from high school in 1944, she attended St. John's Lutheran Junior College in Winfield, Kansas. Upon graduating in 1948, she accepted a call to teach first grade at Zion Evangelical Lutheran Church in Fort Wayne, Indiana. While teaching, she met her first husband, Robert B. Gardner. They married in 1950 and moved to Pennsylvania where their children, Ann, Blair, Robert and Susan were born. In 1958, the family moved to a small home on Yankeetown Road outside of Ashland. Gloria remained in her home at that location, a place she treasured and the gathering place for neighborhood children, for 59 years. During that time, she and Robert had their last child, Amy, in 1969. After Robert's death in 1977, Gloria married James Brown, a widower with three children in 1983. Two of those children, Danita Tiller and David Brown, survive her, as do each of her children with her first husband. She volunteered at Ashland charities for many years and was recognized for her service by Governor Douglas Wilder in 1994. She relocated to Charlottesville in March 2021 to be closer to Amy. Visitation will occur at Nelsen Funeral Home, on Monday, January 3, 2022, between 4:30 and 7:30 p.m.. She was the last founding member of Holy Cross Lutheran Church, now the Ashland campus of Trinity Lutheran Church, where her funeral service will be conducted on Tuesday, January 4 at 10 a.m. A private burial service at Signal Hill Cemetery in Hanover will be conducted on Wednesday.
Published by Richmond Times-Dispatch on Jan. 4, 2022.