Patti Mancini heard many of the stories for the first time after her son died. June 16 is Teddy Garner’s birthday. He’d be 25, if not for the fatal crash on Interstate-95 that claimed his life in March 2004. When news of Gardner’s death spread, his Flagler Palm Coast classmates and friends opened up about what he meant to them.
“Many of the children at the time just wrote long, long letters to me, about how he would champion them,” Mancini said. By reading just a few, she learned Teddy “never tolerated anybody picking on anybody else who was weaker than them.”
Current Matanzas football coach Robert Ripley was 23, fresh out of college and eager to assert himself. He was Teddy’s coach on FPC’s jayvee baseball team. And he remembers the exact spot near the entrance of the Volusia Mall where he stood when he got the call about the accident.
“I called (former FPC varsity coach Dusty Sims), and I was at the hospital in a matter of minutes,” Ripley said. “It was truly heartbreaking.”
A decade later, Mancini still sought ways to carry on Teddy’s memory — his penchant for fighting for the underdog and his concern for others. Through conversations with FPC Athletics Director Steve DeAugustino, she learned that the baseball field desperately needed a new scoreboard.
From all-stars to travel ball to a high school career that was called countless innings too soon, “baseball was a huge part of our life,” Mancini said.
The school’s need and Teddy’s legacy lined up perfectly. Recently, they developed a plan to raise money, about $7,000, for the new hardware through business sponsorships and private donations on the website GoFundMe. If all goes well, the scoreboard will be in place when the Bulldogs start play next winter.
“I would say if there’s a timeline (for completion), it’d be around January,” DeAugustino said.
The profile photo at the top of the GoFundMe account shows Teddy on FPC’s field wearing Bulldogs baseball swag. Strands of his long, dark hair wing upwards at the ears and his ballcap sits high atop the mop. The tones are warm — like everyone who knew Teddy describes him.
As a 14-year-old freshman, Gardner never had to lobby coaches to play him at his primary position of center field.
“He could run like a deer,” Ripley recalled.
Next spring, beyond those vast expanses where Gardner was born to range but never had the chance — hunting down shots in the gap and robbing greedy base runners — there will be a scoreboard bearing his name. Let’s make it happen, Palm Coast.
Fundraising for the project continues; you can chip in for the scoreboard by contributing to the GoFundMe account at:
gofundme.com/TeddyG or by writing a check payable to FPC Athletics with a note stating the donation is for the Teddy Gardner Memorial Scoreboard.
