Below is an article Brett Bowman authored about Bill for the Kokomo Tribune.

BOWMAN: Gardner knew how to live life 07/30/2014

What is it about dirt track racing that makes me drop nearly everything and everyone around me to witness a race?

The answer to that question is, well, I don’t really have an answer.

There is the obvious reason — that racing on dirt is without a doubt the best racing found anywhere. But the thing that makes it all the more special is the folks you come in contact with night in and night out at the different tracks.

I’ve been fortunate in my life to know some very good people, but I’d say most of the kindest, nicest folks around are ones I’ve met at the race track.

One such person was a gentleman from the southwestern part of the state named Bill Gardner.

I knew of him through his website, Indiana Open Wheel. A few years back at the Hoosier Auto Racing Fans Awards Banquet, I realized that he was fighting cancer.

As fate would have it, Bill and I both received awards at that particular banquet and we got the opportunity to banter back and forth during the picture-taking following the ceremony. In the months that followed, I was asked by a racing magazine to do an article on Bill and his fight.

It was during one of the first conversations with him that I realized that this guy wasn’t going to just lay down and let the dreaded disease take away what life he had remaining. No, he was looking it straight in the eye and fighting like hell to beat it.

Sadly, for those who knew him and in a lot of cases, those who knew of him, the fight came to an end Monday morning when he left this earth.

Although I rarely visit IOW these days, what Bill provided was a forum for fans from across the country to go and voice their opinions on just about anything open-wheel related. He would step in and moderate when a wire was getting personal, always sort of a behind-the-scenes referee.

Although I imagine I spoke to Bill only a handful of times, there would be the friendly nod when you would pass him in the pits or grandstands. The cool thing is that during our too few conversations he taught me lessons about life without realizing that’s what he was doing.

Listening to him talk about his battle and how he lived life to the fullest taught me a lot of things.

But mostly it taught me about one man’s courage and his will to live with death looming larger each and every day.