Paul Gardner talks falling in love, adoption and working for Sodexo
From crossing the pond to America to adopting two girls, Paul Gardner has lived a full life.
Photo by John David Clark, Photography Editor
As the adage goes, love can make people do crazy things. Lee's Chick-fil-A cashier Paul Gardner is no different.
From the county of Kent in the United Kingdom, Gardner moved to the United States after falling in love with Amy Beth Gardner, a secretary in the Global Perspectives office.
Before moving to the United States, Paul Gardner worked at a child support agency. One day during his lunch break, he stumbled upon Amy Beth's blog on fostering children.
“I basically read her whole blog, and she is a very good writer. There were certain things that she had written about, such as…people only looking at the outer person and not knowing how nice a person can be on the inside,” Gardner said. “I thought, ‘That’s very much how I feel. Nobody looks at how you are inside.’”
After reading her blog, Gardner said he was compelled to contact her to tell her how the words had touched him.
“I emailed her without expecting any reply, but the following day, she replied back to me, and I thought, ‘This is weird. I wasn’t expecting any reply at all,’” Gardner said. “And we just kept emailing each other for a long time.”
After navigating around the five-hour time difference and communicating through weekend telephone calls for a while, the two met face-to-face in July of 2011. Gardner said he came to the United States for a singing convention, and Amy Beth offered to meet him.
“I said, ‘You’re not going anywhere before your father says you can meet a complete stranger,’” Gardner said. “Eventually, she flew to where I was and met me, and we fell in love pretty much within that week. I didn’t think I would. I mean, I’d reached the age where I didn’t think I would get married, so it was a big surprise to me.”
On Christmas Eve of 2011, Gardner proposed to Amy Beth on the riverside of the Ocoee. Gardner said he expected no one to be around but was instead surprised by a man holding a rifle.
“I went down on some stones, and just as I was about to ask her to marry me, a guy came out with a rifle because he had been out fishing and hunting. And I said, ‘Do you mind? I’m about to ask my girlfriend to marry me,’” Gardner said. “He looked around at her and I and said, ‘Oh, yes, congratulations.’ I remember just thinking, ‘Could you just point the gun the other way please?’”
The first six months of their engagement was a waiting game. Gardner stayed in England while Amy Beth worked tirelessly on the heap of paperwork required for him to become a citizen of the United States. On Sept. 15, 2012, they were finally married.
Paul and Amy Beth Gardner’s family doubled when they adopted two girls they had been fostering.
“We fostered them for quite some time. Then we decided once we had become so attached to them that we were going to adopt because we wanted children,” Paul Gardner said. “We found [raising them] to be difficult to begin with, but luckily, my wife is such a natural mother. I found it more difficult, I must admit. But over time, it has become a lot easier, and now I have no problem.”
Paul Gardner has since joined his wife at Lee, working for Sodexo at the Chick-fil-A on campus. He said that scoring a job with Sodexo has had benefits for his family.
“The great thing about working here is that, because my wife works here, there’s no problems when it comes to holidays and vacations,” Gardner said. “We can take the girls to Disney World, which we are going to do next Wednesday. This will be the fourth time.”
Gardner has been working as a regular cashier for six years and said he enjoys the friendships with those around him.
“I enjoy my job a great deal. I really enjoy working with my coworkers, and I get along well with all of them,” Gardner said. “I’ve made a lot of friends within the student community, and they’re a great bunch of people.”
Chick-fil-A cashier Patricia Thomas said she gets along well with Paul Gardner due to his personable nature and sarcastic jokes.
“He’s most definitely a people person. He’s really interested in where people are from,” Thomas said. “During work, he has a sense of humor. Sometimes he uses sarcasm. He claims that the British invented sarcasm because he’s from London.”
In addition to building relationships with the Sodexo staff, Paul Gardner has developed positive relations with students as well. Junior history and Spanish major Chase Filasky said Paul Gardner goes out of his way to build relationships with the students at Lee.
“I work at the bookstore, and I eat at Chick-fil-A every day. He jokes around with me a lot and has a lighthearted sense of humor,” Filasky said. “We all can tell that he loves his job and getting to interact with all the students every day. I just hope that, career-wise, I have the same passion about working every day like he does.”
Gardner has continued to pursue his passions throughout his life, leading to a happy family and an occupation rooted in community.
