Former News 3 anchor Jane Gardner died Saturday night after her fifth bout with cancer.
Gardner was a broadcast journalist for decades for WTKR and WVEC, and was inducted into the Virginia Commonwealth University Hall of Fame in 2018. Over the years, her work won her seven national and eight state broadcast journalism awards, as well as numerous other honors for community service.
She left broadcast journalism in 1998, and in 1999 was first diagnosed with breast cancer. Friends say she seemed unbeatable after prevailing against skin cancer in 2009, ovarian cancer in 2015 and lung cancer in 2016.
In 2015, Gardner spoke to News 3 about her ovarian cancer diagnosis, saying, “There are people who are so much worse off than me. I feel very fortunate that I didn’t die the first time around or the second and I’m here today having really had a really wonderful life and we’ll see what happens. A very wise man once told me, just live every day."
According to her family, she died at Sentara Leigh Hospital at 10:30 p.m. Saturday.
