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All in the Family

Jefferson alum James Gardner III, MD ’02 on a medical trip to Guatemala.

Four generations of Sidney Kimmel Medical College alumni keep compassion at the heart of their care

For the Gardner family, Jefferson is a family affair. Four generations — and no less than a dozen members of the extended family — claim Jefferson as its alma mater.

Fathers, children, siblings, uncles, and cousins have all followed the same path to create a legacy of compassion and caring for their communities.

“It all began with my grandfather, a highly respected surgeon in the area, and then my father, also highly respected surgeon,” says James Gardner III, MD ’02, a family medicine practitioner in New Wilmington, Pennsylvania, a small rural town about an hour north of Pittsburgh known for rolling hills and Amish farmland. “The conversations at home centered on where they were trained, and it planted the seeds early in our minds that there is one place you can go to get the right training.”

Success sets up a legacy, he says. “It gets passed down — now to the fourth generation.”

This image shows James Gardner III, MD ’02, with a patient on a medical mission trip in Guatemala.

The first generation consisted of his grandfather and great uncle, James L Gardner Sr MD ’41 and Thomas A. Gardner, MD ’52; it continued with his father, James L. Gardner II, MD ’72 and uncle Stuart Gardner, MD ’79, and his sister Margaret Delposen, MD ’95. Along the line there was his great uncles son, Thomas W. Gardner MD ’79, his grandfather’s stepson, Steven Wing, MD ’01, and cousins, Bruce “Jay” Gardner, MD ’04, Sarah E. Gardner MD ‘09, just to name a few. Additionally, Gardner’s sister, Tamitha Gardner, graduated from the Jefferson College of Nursing in ‘96.

This year, Gardner’s son, James L. Gardner IV DO (PCOM ’26), will begin a family medicine residency at Jefferson Abington Hospital.

What drew four generations of Gardners to Jefferson — aside from its excellence in training — was its dedication to the community, particularly the underserved.

“I was fully invested in serving the city of Philadelphia while I was there,” says Gardner of the many opportunities Jefferson provided for volunteer work with the underserved.

He was involved with JeffHOPE, where teams of medical students and physicians work together to operate free, weekly clinics at four homeless shelters and one drop-in center. In addition, he and his circle of friends started a program for the homeless. 

This image shows James Gardner III, MD ’02, with a group of people on a medical mission trip in Guatemala.

“We had about sixty students that joined with us to gather finances and supplies for the homeless,” he says. “Twice a year we would walk the streets with care packages, and we would spend time talking to them and make sure they knew there were resources and help guide them from a medical standpoint and social services standpoint to better their lives.”

He also volunteered with the Summer Medical Institute, a faith-based Christian organization that offers health screenings and social services to underserved communities such as Kensington. While the SMI was not a Jefferson program, he says many Jefferson students, alumni, and physicians participated. And then there was Jeff Moms, a program that assigned students to a new mother whom they would follow from pregnancy through delivery and beyond.

“It really helped me to engage outside of academics — to really get connected with the community,” he says, adding that he appreciates that Jefferson instills caring for the community in their students.

He brought that tenet back to his hometown practice by working to improve the health and wellbeing of his community through a non-profit organization dedicated to serving the needs of all. Philanthropically, he started the Good Samaritan Fund that aids patient’s medical financial needs.

For the Gardner family, serving a greater cause reaches beyond their local community.

He and his brother, orthopedic surgeon, Mark A. Gardner DO (PCOM ’06) recently led a team of 19 medical professionals to Northern Petén, a vast, jungle-covered area in northern Guatemala. It was his seventh trip there.

“The last four times I’ve taken my children along with the medical group. We would go into very remote villages with all the medical gear we could gather and set up clinics,” he says. The group spent their days providing medical care for the locals.

He says these missions have taught him “the more you give, the more you receive. And you come back encouraged, enlightened, and just so thankful for the skills we can offer people in that way and offer hope to the underserved.”

Gardner’s path in medicine has taken him far and wide over the years, he says. But at the heart of everything is his grandfather’s motto adopted from Colossians 3:23: “Be the best you are at whatever you do.”

As his daughter Annalee Faith Gardner, a college junior, now eyes Sidney Kimmel Medical College for her future, Gardner has one bit of advice for her and all the other physicians of tomorrow: “Keep your patients at the center of care… and do the work because you love it.”

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