Sally Jane Gendler, master gardener, volunteer, and late-in-life artist, dies at 60
In March and April, as she underwent treatments for leukemia, Mrs. Gendler made a series of drawings of fruits, vegetables, and flowers. They helped her cope, she said.
Sally Jane Gendler brought an irrepressible liveliness to all she did.
She made friends at the Mount Airy Recreation Center, where she volunteered, and at gardening clubs across the Philadelphia area. Her passions were gardening and the culinary arts, and she liked to share them with others.
“Sally was a bright light in the communities that she touched,” said her longtime friend Anne Standish, with whom she volunteered at the Morris Arboretum of the University of Pennsylvania. “She was very, very special.”
Mrs. Gendler created a program, Cooking From the Garden, at the recreation center, also a playground. Students learned to propagate vegetables from seed, tend the plants, and cook a meal with the harvest. She was selected to present the program at this year’s national symposium of the American Horticultural Society.
Before she got the chance, Mrs. Gendler, 60, of Philadelphia, a gardener, teacher, volunteer, and late-in-life artist, died Wednesday, April 22, at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania of complications from acute myeloid leukemia.
She had been diagnosed in March 2019. A year later, when she could no longer grow fruits, vegetables, and flowers, she sketched them, copying from a compendium of botanical drawings sent by an illustrator.
She made most of the dozen drawings in a sketchbook during a two-week hospital stay in March and April, while enrolled in a clinical trial she hoped would save her life. Drawing helped her tolerate the ill effects of immunotherapy. The last sketch of blue orchids, which is unfinished, was done April 18, four days before she died.
“She was literally in the hospital and being bombarded with megadoses of chemotherapy,” said her husband, Steven. “Some days she couldn’t sit up. I don’t know how she did it.”
Born in Hamden, Conn., Mrs. Gendler graduated from what is now the Hopkins School, and in 1982 from Dartmouth College. While in college, she played lacrosse and pledged Sigma Kappa Sorority.
She began her career as a production assistant for ABC’s Wide World of Sports, Monday Night Football, and TV programs on college football, professional golf, and the Olympics.
After leaving television production, she earned a master’s degree in special education from Bank Street College Graduate School of Education. She also took postgraduate courses in the culinary arts from the Art Institute of Philadelphia.
In 1989, she married Gendler, a social-impact real estate developer. They moved to Philadelphia, where she worked in early child development for the United Cerebral Palsy Association of Philadelphia, at Children’s Seashore House in South Jersey, and at Pennsylvania Hospital.
Starting in 2008, she honed her love of travel and culinary sampling by working at Robertson Travel in Philadelphia. After leaving the travel business, she became an education guide at the Morris Arboretum, where she led tours for schoolchildren.
Mrs. Gendler, who held a Master Gardener certificate from Penn State Extension, Philadelphia County, was a judge for the Garden Club of America.
She was also active in the Garden Club of Philadelphia and received the club’s Dorothy Sims Keith Award for Shows Participation and Stimulation of Horticulture Interest, the Heckscher Bowl for Horticulture, and the Peggy Dilks Award for Exhibition.
She was a prize-winning exhibitor at the Philadelphia Flower Show and active with the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society, its sponsor. “She was always a ray of sunshine in the garden world,” said Alan Jaffe, the society’s former director of communications.
She enjoyed golf, tennis, bowling, and water skiing. She was a fan of the Phillies, Eagles, 76ers, and the University of Connecticut Huskies women’s basketball team.
“Friends easily recognized her by her famous laugh, whether she was in the crowd attending events in Philadelphia or at Dartmouth events, even though they may not have seen her for years,” the family said.
Besides her husband, she is survived by daughters Liza and Abigail Gendler; parents Jean and Robert Adnopoz; a brother; and five nieces.
The family will hold a celebration of her life after the pandemic has subsided.
Memorial donations may be made to Sailing Heals (www.sailingheals.org), Morris Arboretum (www.morrisarboretum.org), or the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society (www.LLS.org).