Born 11/7/1950
Maryville, Tennessee
Died 4/23/2023
South Burlington, Vermont
Details of services
A celebration of Andy’s life will be held this fall at the St. John’s Club on the shores of Lake Champlain in Burlington.
Andy Gardiner’s career as a sportswriter introduced him to the greatest athletes on the world stage. Even so, he always had a soft spot for sports figures far from the limelight. Sometimes they made for the best stories. And Andy was a master storyteller.
He died on April 23, 2023, at his home in South Burlington. He was 72.
Andy was named Vermont Sportswriter of the Year four times, but only because they couldn’t give it to him every year. This year, he was named to the Vermont Sports Hall of Fame as the Mal Boright media inductee. This puts him right where he belongs: in the company of so many of the great athletes he covered over the decades.
Andy first came to the state in 1973 to attend graduate school at the University of Vermont. He described it as a time “when the school still had a football team and Gutterson Fieldhouse was wrapped in chicken wire.”
He earned his master’s degree in journalism and joined the sports staff at the Burlington Free Press just as the state’s largest daily newspaper geared up for the 1975 launch of a Sunday edition. Andy’s beats ranged from UVM men’s basketball to the National League’s Montreal Expos to amateur golf. Like his colleagues on the night sports desk, he also worked the phones taking high school basketball and hockey box scores from every corner of the state, from Barton to Bennington.
In 1982, he accepted an assignment to join the team of founding editors and reporters at USA Today, the national newspaper that is part of the same ownership group as the Free Press. He arrived several months before it started publication, and went on to cover sports at the highest levels, from the Major League Baseball playoffs to the National Football League players’ strike.
He was offered a permanent spot on the Washington-based staff but chose to return to his beloved Vermont. He later called it one of the most difficult decisions of his life. Over the years, USA Today would regularly come calling to ask him about coming back. He would eventually say yes in 2000.
But in the intervening years, Andy established himself as Vermont’s preeminent sports columnist. He developed an especially loyal following around his “Just Thinking” Sunday column of bits-and-pieces news items.
In a going-away column announcing that he was going back to USA Today, Andy spoke of the “magic of sitting in the Fenway Park press box on Oct. 1, 1975, to cover the Yankees-Red Sox playoff game.” He also described “the saddest day I ever spent on the job,” when he got word that Kevin Roberson, the former UVM basketball star, had died when his car was struck head-on by a drunk driver.
“For the last 25 years, writing about sports has been my job, although I rarely thought of it in those terms,” he wrote then. “I wouldn’t recommend the hours, but it was usually too much fun to consider work.”
Andrew Donald Gardiner was born on Nov. 7, 1950, in Maryville, Tennessee, the son of Marie (Tropman) and Donald Andrew Gardiner, who predeceased him. He was a graduate of Oak Ridge High School, where he played on the basketball team.
Andy went on to Florida State University, where he received a bachelor’s degree in communications in 1972. He often said the highlight of his college days was the junior year spent abroad at the Loyola Chicago Rome Center of Liberal Arts. He formed lifelong friendships there.
During summers off from Florida State, he worked as a news reporter at the Oak Ridger, a daily newspaper founded by editor Dick Smyser, who had earned a national reputation for his role in modernizing news coverage in the South.
Upon graduation, Andy enrolled at the University of Vermont, sight unseen. (He had no idea yet how much he would come to love the state.) He wrote his master’s thesis about the career of legendary Sports Illustrated writer Dan Jenkins, once described by Larry King as the “best sportswriter in America.” Andy recorded several interviews with Jenkins and wrote a thesis that painted a vivid picture of one of the profession’s most skilled observers and graceful writers. Andy later covered Olympic events alongside Washington Post columnist Sally Jenkins, who is her father’s daughter at the keyboard.
Gardiner covered 11 Olympics. He covered Alpine skiing at Winter Games in Calgary, Albertville, Lillehammer, Nagano, Salt Lake, Torino and Vancouver while telling the stories of Lindsey Vonn, Picabo Street and Bode Miller. He covered track and field at Summer Games in Atlanta, Sydney, Athens and Beijing, where he chronicled the exploits of Michael Johnson, Usain Bolt and Cathy Freeman, Australia’s Aboriginal runner.
Still, Andy’s favorite moments often came away from the main Olympic stadium. He was especially proud of his role in covering the inaugural competition of women’s softball and soccer during the 1996 Atlanta Games. And sometimes a scene entirely away from the events themselves left a special mark on him.
His favorite memory from the 2004 Athens Games was traveling north by train from the Olympic park to Maroussi. There, patrons in a restaurant gathered around a small TV in the centuries-old city, loudly cheering for a Greek wrestler. Otherwise, Andy said, in scanning the cobblestone streets, one would never have known there was an Olympics going on just eight miles away.
And while he covered his share of college football bowl games and Final Fours, Andy maintained a special affection for athletes and teams competing in non-revenue sports or lower-profile competitions such as hockey, lacrosse and gymnastics. As he wrote in that 2000 column, “I’ve signed on with USA Today as part of an expansion of its national college coverage. I’m off to Washington to help shine a light on some of the sports that get lost in the imposing shadows of major college football and basketball.”
Upon his retirement from USA Today, in 2012, Andy returned to Vermont and continued as a freelancer and contributor to Vermont Public Radio. He also worked on various projects with the Middlebury College athletics department, including writing feature stories for gameday football programs.
As Andy’s health declined in recent weeks, it became apparent he would not be able to attend the Hall of Fame induction ceremony on April 29. At the initiation of Mike Donoghue, a former longtime colleague at the Free Press, a small team of board members including chairman John Maley paid a visit to present Andy with his plaque. The special tribute included a video message from Vermont Gov. Phil Scott, himself a sportsman who still races stock cars at the state’s premier track in Barre.
“Hi Andy, Governor Phil Scott here — or, better yet, driver of the No. 14 at Vermont’s famed Thunder Road …” the state’s chief executive said before offering his congratulations. “I want you to know you’ve made Vermont very proud … and whether covering sports here in Vermont or on the national stage, you clearly left your mark and earned the respect of your colleagues and readers alike. Thank you for being a part of our brave little state.”
At the private Hall of Fame presentation, former Colchester High School gymnast Nini (Wuensch) Anger spoke of Andy’s special approach to storytelling. “You saw beyond the talent, beyond the points and the scores, and portrayed the very human side of the athletes,” she said. “And you touched the lives of so many and your words live on for generations to come.”
As it happens, Anger was honored as Vermont’s Athlete of the Year in 1977 during the same ceremony at which Andy received one of his Sportswriter of the Year awards. “Your words,” Anger said, “wove together the stories that allowed the athletes and the teams and the coaches to celebrate the joy of winning all over again the next morning in the pages of the Burlington Free Press. And at times of unthinkable tragedy, your words consoled and brought comfort to the families, teammates, coaches and the community.”
Andy concluded that 2000 farewell column to his loyal followers this way: “For those who have endured my byline over the last 25 years, a thousand thanks for reading. I leave Vermont knowing that wherever I am is going to suffer by comparison.”
Andy is survived by his sisters: Ellen (Gardiner) Morgan of Knoxville, Tennessee, and her husband, Tom Morgan, and Katie (Gardiner) Cole of Memphis and her husband Keith Cole. In addition, Andy leaves his four nephews: George, Sam, Ned and Will Morgan.