Ben Gardiner, My Maternal Grandfather

Ben Gardiner, My Maternal Grandfather

Ben Gardiner

Rewritten from: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/ben-gardiner-aids-info-bbs-sysadmin-john-west/

I don't know much about my mother's father, Benjamin Outram Gardiner, or his life. I don't know the relevence of his middle name. When I was living in Singapore later in life, I found Outram Park MRT to be one of the stations nearest to my office. My life seems to be full of weird luck and little coincidences like that, as if someone is planning it from above and all I have to do is walk down the right path.

Based on my experiences with him, I believe that he was an incredible person and a good role model. I named my second son after him and I hope that we have both inherited some of Ben's intelligence, developed some of his wisdom, and mimicked some of his humanistic efforts. Despite breaking away from various teachings and rituals of certain churches, he was always a practicing and true Christian, originally Episcopalian.

Ben was born into a wealthy family and lived through the depression. The town of Gardiner, Maine is actually named after this family. When I tried to explain this to my first boss in Silicon Valley, he didn't recognize the town name, though I said it several times. Eventually he excitedly said something like, "Oh, Gahdneh*!" with a strong Maine accent. The Gardiner family owns Oaklands Castle in Gardiner, Maine. While I have visted a few times, I have no stake in this corporation. Ben is burried in a church graveyards not far from Oaklands. I haven't read it, but one of my relatives, Robert H. Gardiner VI, wrote the book Figuring It Out: The Story of Gardiners and Oaklands.

Ben once told me about being driven around in cars and seeing people scavenging for food. I believe that such experiences significantly influenced his perspective. I don't know in what field, but I know that he graduated from Harvard University. While he never completely discarded his inherited wealth, he abandoned a lifestyle of luxury and put his efforts into caring for those with less advantages.

After he returned from World War II Europe, Ben quickly had four children before determining that he was gay. This conflict had brought out some abusive alcoholic tendencies and he had to leave the family to join Alcoholics Anonymous and a monastery for a time. Much of the family was embarrassed, resenting and discarding him for this.

After he found himself, he was a truck driver and then ended up living in the Castro in San Francisco. He avoided alcohol for the remainder of his life. We might not appreciate now how different things were in the 70s, especially for people that did not conform.

I understand that Ben visited my parents when I was young and I assume that he attended my christening, but I have no memory or any photographs of ether occurrence. I understand that Ben was distant from the entire family, and the death of my mother when I was four and a half years old likely kept him even more distant from my father and my brothers.

My first distinct memory of Ben is from when I was about 8 and a half years old. For some reason, when my father married my stepmother, Ben took me from one of the wedding events to another. I remember not being impressed with his old, compact car, which I now realize he likely borrowed from someone. Mostly I remember beard and I guess a bit of crazy old man.

When I was eleven, I started working with computers, which is an interest that Ben and I shared. Towards the end of my college years, in a clear effort to connect personally, Ben sent me two photographs of himself at different ages. Ben was a model and an actor. At some point later, I was flipping through a computer magazine and recognized my grandfather as the face of time in an advertisement for Chronos or Kronos or some other timeless vault software. Ben was proud of the few commercials in which he appeared, as well as his small part in The Doors movie. I always liked watching him taking some kids’ weed and rolling a joint in The Tripper.

In those early days of the Internet, Ben was one of the few people on email, and we communicated in oneline. Ben set up some email distribution to help the family communicate. I am not good at managing email archives, but I probably have copies of numerous communications of ours from over the years. I would try to visit Ben whenever I came to the bay area. When I lived in Silicon Valley, I was often busy and a weekend voyage to San Francisco always seemed like too much of a hassle, but I continued to visit periodically. Most of our visits consisted of experiences at nearby restaurants where everyone knew Ben followed by a walk back to Ben’s house for tea and further conversation. Christian and Isabelle often visited and sometimes we would cook meals at Ben’s house.

Before mobile phones with digital cameras were standard, Ben encouraged me to buy an early Kodak digital camera of a type that he was enjoying. I had not taken pictures in years; any photographs that I have from my days in Ireland came from this camera, which still works.

For the first few months of 2000, while transitioning to the bay area, I moved into a room of Ben’s crowded three-room apartment on Noe Street in San Francisco. Ben considered this an excuse to indulge ourselves by having a cook come to prepare our dinners, which he enjoyed more for the experience than the flavor..

We would talk about numerous subjects, often with some focus on technology, philosophy, religion, culture, politics, current events, especially whatever technology, acting, modeling, civics, or other projects Ben was entertaining at the time.

It was at this time that I met my wife, Susan, who visited at Ben’s occasionally. Once we went to a Thai restaurant about one block from Ben’s apartment. Ben was dissatisfied with the fish asked for sauce. I remember that it took some time to determine that he was after tartar sauce and the disappointment when it could not be provided.

The last time I saw Ben was at a surprise party for my wife Susan after the birth of our first child, John, named after my father’s father (I named my second son Ben after my mother’s father). To assist in the secrecy, that morning, my business partner brought Ben from San Francisco to our house in the east bay. Ben was an interesting character and a good conversationalist. Everyone wanted to know more about him and he was a sort of third focus at the party.

Afterwards, I took Ben back to San Francisco and we had a late lunch at a restaurant near his house. I remember someone in a wheelchair approached our table but could tell that we wanted to be alone. I honestly remember looking directly into his eyes and thinking that I wished that he could live forever and seeing a knowing response that seemed to foresee what was about to happen without fear or hesitancy.

Ben died of heart failure shortly after my first son arrived. Turnout at his funeral was amazing. I was responsible for his possessions, which was an educational experience. I had known him well but learned a great deal more about what was important to him by sifting through his things.

There were numerous reminders of his modeling, acting, and civic activity, as well as mementos from countless friends. Not only had he provided hospice care to people dying of AIDS, but he had kept the personal items that meant something to them - not their clothes or any valuables, but small collections of what seemed important in their lives.

One item was a box of whistles. While people from the GLBT History Society (an old reference - I believe that LGBTQIA+ is current) were there to collect a bullhorn and some other items that were somehow significant, they explained that he had handed them out in the early days so that people could reduce the potential of being seriously bashed on the street.

If I understand correctly, Ben knew Harvey Milk well, and they spent time at each other’s homes, performing their civic duties to organize resistance. One of the linked videos included below shows Ben walking behind Milk.

This was around the time of the start of the AIDS crisis. Ben would take patients into his home and provide hospice care until they died. He was quite involved with his local community. He was also a sysadmin for AIDS INFO BBS and Queernet. Another item from his apartment was a bank of huge modems nailed to a plywood board. I wish that I had snapped a photo. The Altos box of which I posted a photo recently (plus most of its contents) came from his home. He was from the depression era, which had made him a bit of a hoarder.

Towards the end of his life, Ben was working on a project called Talking Portraits, which was a way for people to provide some type of record of their lives, using video. One or more partners in this effort captured some content about Ben. It's a worthwhile five minutes, but unfortunately I cannot find it now.

Ben was an incredible man.

Resources About Ben