Gina Maria (Gabbard) Savage

Gina Maria (Gabbard) Savage, age 47, dedicated mother, daughter, sister, wife and friend, passed away July 17th 2017 after an arduous two and a half year battle with pancreatic cancer. To those that knew her well, and others who only made a short acquaintance, she left an enduring legacy of “all things beautiful”. Gina was beautiful, both inside and out.

Gina knew no stranger, nor missed an opportunity to show compassion to anyone in need. She touched the lives of all those around her with grace, charm, and elegance, combined with wit and humor.

In her professional life she was an avid photographer, artist and spiritual researcher. Traveling all over the world as an Army wife, she experienced a wide variety of people, cultures and memories. She loved the ocean breeze blowing through her hair, and sand beneath her bare feet, campfires and sad movies; these and countless more “beautiful moments” personify her love of life.

Although living only 47 calendar years, her life spanned millennia in how she lived it. Gina embraced it with ambition, zeal, laughter and love. She danced with life and loved the Living God Himself. Her family, however, was her greatest passion. Her children (four biological and four step-children) and husband Alan were her life’s focus. To this end, she recently wrote in her journal: “ I no longer live in time, I live in moments….Love is just a word until someone comes along and gives it meaning .” Alan and the rest of her family did just that.

Gina personified a “life well lived.” She immersed herself in the most important and sacred things of life often overlooked by many. She believed that life was not a hollow series of meaningless events but was for a divine purpose. Nothing could capture this better than Rudyard Kipling’s famous poem “If” (published in the book Rewards and Fairies in 1910). Here he wrote:

“ If you can keep your head when all about you

Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,

If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,

But make allowance for their doubting too;

If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,

Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,

Or being hated, don’t give way to hating,

And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise:

If you can dream—and not make dreams your master;

If you can think—and not make thoughts your aim;

If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster

And treat those two impostors just the same;

If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken

Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,

Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,

And stoop and build ’em up with worn-out tools:

If you can make one heap of all your winnings

And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,

And lose, and start again at your beginnings

And never breathe a word about your loss;

If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew

To serve your turn long after they are gone,

And so hold on when there is nothing in you

Except the Will which says to them: ‘Hold on!’

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,

Or walk with Kings—nor lose the common touch,

If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,

If all men count with you, but none too much;

If you can fill the unforgiving minute

With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,

Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it .”

We celebrate and commemorate a magnificent life lived to the fullest with love, honor, dignity, respect and compassion.

Gina is survived by her husband Alan, her children: Joshua, Zachary, Juliana and Sophia and step-children: Joshua, Elizabeth, Benjamin and Abigail. She is likewise survived by her parents: Vernon and Pauline Gabbard and sister Jill (and husband Brian) Vice. Beyond these, she leaves many cherished aunts, uncles, nieces, nephews and cousins. Also touching Gina’s life were friends, colleagues and most specifically her Army Family network.

A funeral service will be held on Tuesday, July 25th at 1100 AM at FRENCH - Wyoming (7120 Wyoming Blvd. NE, Albuquerque, NM 87109). Interment for the family will follow at 2:15 PM at the Santa Fe National Cemetery (501 N. Guadalupe St, Santa Fe, NM). Flowers may be sent to the FRENCH - Wyoming (at address previously listed), and memorial contributions to the Pancreatic Cancer Action Network , 1500 Rosecrans Ave. Ste. 200. Manhattan Beach, CA. 90266.