My father, Keith Gardner, who has died aged 77, was a salesman for Diversey, a chemical cleaning supplies company, who, despite struggling to attain his academic potential in school, thrived at a complex job for more than 25 years.
Born in Leighton Buzzard, Bedfordshire, to Bert Gardner, a foundry manager, and his wife, Gwen (nee Johnson), Keith attended the Rudolf Steiner school in Kings Langley, Hertfordshire. In 1950, aged 11, he participated in a six-month student exchange with a school in Germany, where he was met with humanity, generosity and friendship. This experience, so soon after the end of the war, had a significant influence on him and helped shape his social conscience and liberal values.
Keith left school aged 16 without any qualifications and trained as a car mechanic at a small family garage in Berkhamsted. In 1961 he joined Massey Ferguson, selling agricultural equipment, and moved in 1971 to Diversey (later DiverseyLever) in the home counties, where he stayed until his retirement in 2000.
On Christmas Day 1960, he met “Pinky” (so-called because of her role at the time in Hornsey Operatic Society’s production of Pink Champagne), real name Carole Sage, at a party in Potten End, and three years later they married.
They had three children, and settled in the small Bedfordshire village of Clophill. Keith was a loving father, raising us to be socially active and environmentally aware. He was funny and creative, a connector; people were drawn to him and he to them.
A staunch believer in animal welfare and a vegetarian for more than 50 years, Keith rescued various forms of wildlife, whether a swan landing in error on a main road or a deer knocked down by a car.
He rescued people, too, among them a widow whom our father had made it his job to visit and comfort during her darkest times. She described him as a surrogate son. Once, while driving between customers, he stopped to investigate a crashed car in the undergrowth, and found an unconscious young mother, her toddler screaming in a bramble patch some yards away from the vehicle. Keith’s quick actions meant that the woman and her child survived.
Despite having a heart condition (which exempted him from national service) Keith was always active. He was a member of the Hornsey Operatic Society before the children came along, after which he made the scenery for school productions, village groups and churches. He and Carole loved to dance; in recent years they took up old-time and modern sequence dancing, and he supported Carole while she retrained in her 60s to be a dance teacher.
In 2005 they moved to Bramfield, Suffolk, and Keith became warden of St Peter’s church, Thorington.
He is survived by Carole, by their children, Andrew, Steven and me, and by seven grandchildren.
