In Memoriam: Tom Gardner, 80
Scholar and Former President, Chase Manhattan Canada
Tom Cole Gardner, former president of Chase Manhattan Canada, died after a long illness on March 6, 2024. He was 80 and had lived in Henderson, TN.
Born and raised in LaFollette,TN, he went on to a distinguished and remarkably varied academic and professional career that caused him to live most of his life in or around the cities of San Francisco, Washington, New York and Toronto.
He was a graduate of the University of California - Berkeley, where he earned membership in Phi Beta Kappa honor society, earned a PhD in Renaissance literature and taught.
The breadth of his knowledge and intellectual interests is suggested by his then leaving Berkeley to become a consultant to the U.S. Department of Energy on geothermal energy production. He left government employment to work as an investment banker for the Chase Manhattan Bank in New York, rising steadily in his management responsibilities to end his career at the bank as president of Chase Manhattan Canada.
Gardner had suffered from a variety of serious health problems in recent years, moving to Henderson in 2019 already under hospice care.
He is survived by a son and four brothers.