On February 28, 2024, Gary "called a lid" and went home to meet his Heavenly Father. Gary is survived by his wife of 44 years, a daughter, grandson, mother, sisters, brother-in law, aunts, uncles, cousins and many friends and colleagues.

He is proud to be a native Lakelander who attended local schools and graduated from Florida Southern College with a Bachelor's Degree in Business. He started working in construction at age 14 and continued in that field starting his own trim carpentry business, obtaining his Florida contractor's license, working as a construction superintendent for Ernie White Construction and finally selling lumber and building materials for Joyner Lumber to his many acquaintances throughout Central Florida. And yes kids, you do use math in real life. He spent many nights and weekends calculating materials from blueprints using his scale.

As his friends and family will tell you, he is irreplaceable. That is why we are so grateful to the staff, doctors and nurses of the SICU department at Lakeland Regional Hospital who worked around the clock to care for his needs. We are also amazed by the ECMO technology that Lakeland has acquired to treat critical care patients locally instead of sending them to larger cities. And lastly we will be forever changed by heroes Dr. Derek Hansen, Dr. James Brown and Monica Cobb, APRN. We move forward.