Gloria was born in Rochester, NY on Christmas Day in 1935. Her date of birth was the reason her parents, William A. Williams (Bill) and Catherine (Rena) Williams (born McKellar), named her Gloria Carol. Both Bill and Rena were Scottish, he born in Port Glasgow and she born of a Scottish shipbuilder also from Port Glasgow, in Superior, Wisconsin.

Gloria was an only child and loved her parents immensely. They were wonderful people and taught her extremely well, for she became an amazing, compassionate, loving, fun loving, wide-eyed friend to all, just like they were. And from them she also inherited her remarkable sense of humor and absolute love of life. She simply radiated goodness and happiness and warmed everyone who came near.

As a single woman, Gloria traveled the world, even wanting to become a flight attendant if it hadn’t meant spending too much time away from her parents, family and friends, and spent a good deal of time with friends in Europe, as well as some time in the Caribbean and Mexico. Many of these trips were taken with her parents through Kodak tours. Through her travels she became lifelong friends with several Europeans, especially a few Swiss, and grew very close to her Scottish relatives.

In 1973 she married Harold Sargent, who everyone has always called Jack. They met on a blind date of sorts at Jack’s cousin Christine’s house, who was always throwing boisterous parties for big groups of family and friends. Christine had met Gloria when she was a patient at the Ear, Nose and Throat doctor where Gloria was a medical assistant, and invited her to her New Year’s Eve party where she would fix Gloria up with Jack.

Despite being in their mid to late 30s, neither Gloria nor Jack had been married, and in fact had both been living in their parents’ houses since they were born. No wonder people were trying to fix them up. They hit it off at the party and Jack asked her out on a date. She agreed, and soon after they had their first night out. Jack, a motorcycle hobbyist but not a hardcore biker, thought it would be a smooth idea to take Gloria to go see ‘Easy Rider’, knowing only that it had something to do with motorcycle riding and figuring that girls think motorcycles are cool. He had no idea it was essentially a drug movie. Neither Jack nor Gloria seemed to care and continued to date. In fact, it wasn’t long before Jack bought Gloria a motorcycle helmet so she could ride on the back of his steel steed. And all of a sudden, Gloria’s parents’ remarkable sense of humor briefly disappeared as they watched their precious, only child ride up to their house one day on the back of some biker dude’s potentially deadly motorcycle.

After a year long romance and a short engagement (Jack wanted it to be even shorter—perhaps he had finally had enough of living with his parents), they were married on May 20, 1973 and moved in together in a suburban house on Fiesta Road in the Rochester, New York suburb of Greece, where they would live for the next 30 some years before moving to Casa Grande, Arizona to be closer to their children, Matt and Marty (Matt was living in Phoenix and Marty was in Santa Monica).

And children and family was really what Gloria was all about. As much as she loved the familiarity, network of lifelong friends and lush greenery in Rochester, having the family closer together was the most important thing for her, as it was for Jack. She traded her beloved lawns, woods, rabbits and deer for her despised sand, heat, scorpions and snakes all for family.

When Matt was born in 1974, she stopped working at the doctor’s office and became a fulltime housewife and mother. This was her true vocation, and she excelled at it better than anyone who has ever lived because she loved the job more than anyone who has ever lived. She turned housewifery and motherhood into a true art form. Their second child, Marty, was born in 1975—just 11 months after his brother.

Gloria loved nothing more than caring for her family, whether it be preparing amazing meals several times daily, taking the children to all sorts of wonderful places, sewing ornate Halloween costumes, crafting holiday decorations, buying everyone way too many gifts for any and all occasions, or just being always there to show her love for them in infinite ways. Whereas some moms breathe a sigh of relief when the children get on the bus every fall to start school again, Gloria sobbed.

With her family, she adored spending a couple of weeks every summer at a rented cottage on Cape Cod or one in The Thousand Islands region on the St. Lawrence River. She also loved camping (where she would prepare insanely gourmet meals out in the woods), fishing (which she was terrible at), attending Matt and Marty’s innumerable sports events, school plays (don’t forget picking them up from practice), horrendous band and choral concerts, cub scout meetings and on and on and on. Really, she loved doing anything as long as it was with or in the service of the three men she loved the most (which is saying a lot because she loved everyone, and everyone loved her).

Speaking about Gloria’s devotion to her family, cooking and house beautification, a bereaved Jack opined after his wife’s passing: “She liked to cook. She has a four drawer file filled with recipes, and a bookcase full of cook books. She loved fresh flowers. She said that if she could afford it, she would have fresh flowers every day. When it came time for interior painting or wallpapering, she would help me. This started some arguments but they only lasted about one minute.”

Here’s a representative example of the remarkable devotion Gloria (and Jack) showed towards their kids. Both Matt and Marty were on the swimming team, which on the east coast is a sport that takes place in the winter season. And winters in Rochester are as miserably cold, wet, and painfully windy as the summers in Casa Grande are hot and dry. And while Matt and Marty were on the swim team, one of the two of them always held a paper route on the next street. So rather than have them give up the paper route, which neither Matt nor Marty really wanted to sacrifice despite the near slave wages, Gloria and Jack delivered the papers every single day through the harshest of winter, pulling a sled with a basket on it stuffed with 50 pounds of newsprint. And of course, they still gave Matt and Marty the money they, the parents, were earning. Who does that? Only the best (some might argue most foolish) parents in the universe.

Gloria, as the nicest, most fun person around, of course had an incredible number of friends. Everyone adored her and she never had a single enemy throughout her life. To the day she passed away she was still close with pretty much everyone she had ever come in contact with, all the way back to high school friends—pretty remarkable for a nearly 80-year old woman. The phone rarely stopped ringing from people who wanted their day to be brightened by Gloria.

And her friends weren’t just limited to humans. Animal lovers, Gloria and Jack always had pets in the house, and their beloved border collie Fergie as well as the mischievous kitten sisters Sarah and Sadie now survive her. All three have brought such tremendous joy to Jack and Gloria’s lives, as they continue to do for Jack.

Gloria was a person who, even during the very difficult struggles of the last few years of her life, absolutely relished living. Even at the lowest points of her significant illness, she never really expressed how truly awful she felt, seemingly to not bring anyone else down. Throughout her life, as long as it didn’t have anything to do with snakes, she wanted to do and try everything. Even when her health prevented her from being able to all that she wanted, she still found opportunities to try it all, even in what struck others as ridiculous ways. For example, if she were at a salad bar and there were 80 items on it, she would put all 80 on her plate, just to make sure she got to taste it all.

There will never be another person like Gloria because she grew up in a different era.  An era when people saw the good things in life and were not spoiled and hardened by the powerful influences of the 21^st century.  Gloria never became consumed with celebrity pop culture, she chose to avoid email and never felt compelled to check her Blackberry at the dinner table (not that she even knew what a Blackberry was, and she would only check the blackberry crumble bubbling in the oven during dinner).  Money and status meant nothing to her, and she loved life more with middle class means than someone 100 times wealthier than she.  She trusted people inherently, and voted for her politicians based on how neatly they dressed or whether they seemed to have a good family – because that was what was important to her.  She saw only the good in everything, had no hate in her heart, and would always make the best out of even the worst situations.  An eternal optimist, something happened in each day of her life that was always “the best ever”.

Gloria is, and will always be, horribly missed. Her being here made the world more beautiful for everyone who had the good fortune of meeting her. And she absolutely made and continues to make, in her memory, the lives of her family so much better, so wonderful, so blessed. None of us would be anywhere near the people we have become without her. She will continue to be with us in our every accomplishment, our every good deed, our every happy thought, our every smile.

Mom, we love you so much. You did everything right. Bravo.

-Marty (with contributions from my brother Matt and father Jack)

P.S. My mom died of multiple myeloma, an unforgiving cancer of the plasma cells in her bone marrow. Donations may be made in the name of Gloria Sargent to The Multiple Myeloma Research Foundation:  http://www.themmrf.org/

Thank You.