Gail Worth

Gail’s Obit

My sweetheart, Gail Elaine Jertson passed away at home in Ponte Vedra Beach, Florida ton November 19, 2022.  

Gail was born October 5, 1936, in Berwyn, Illinois, and lived in Cohasset and Fairhaven, Massachusetts. While in ballet school, she attended Boston Latin, graduated from Fairhaven High School in 1954 and St. Lawrence University in 1958 with Mortar Board Honors and a degree in English.

She was the daughter of Earl C. Jertson of Granite Falls, Minnesota and her beloved mother Lejla Magnusson of Chisholm, Minnesota, both deceased and was also predeceased by a brother, Jan Earl Jertson.

She leaves behind me, her husband, Douglas C. Worth, with whom she was wed September 1, 1962 in Fairhaven, MA, a daughter, Dr. Leila Tiffany Worth of Golden, Colorado and her children (dogs) Ditto and Archie, a son John Stephen Hartmann Worth of New York and two grandchildren, Peter Brooke Worth and Clara Helen (Callie) Worth of New York.

Gail continued with her passion for dancing as an off-Broadway performer before she joined the International Business Machines Company in New York as one of the early members of that company’s systems engineering corps, when IBM began to sell and install commercial computers to replace electromechanical equipment.

She was highly regarded in this pioneering role. It was there that she met me, an IBM salesman. Upon our engagement, in order to comply with a practice of separating couples to work in different branch offices, management moved me and my entire sales unit to another office, so as not to lose Gail.

After the birth of our first child, Leila, she left IBM and began her own systems analysis and programming business that she sustained for ten years, while giving birth to Stephen, until IBM sent the family to Paris, France. The family became communicants at the American Cathedral in Paris, where Gail served as president of the Alter Guild, president and treasurer of the Junior Guild, a member of the vestry. On returning to Paris twenty years later, she was re-elected to the vestry and elected as junior warden.

After a return to the United States and a move to Washington, D.C., she served on a fund-raising committee of the National Cathedral in Washington, DC, on the Washington Ballet Board of Directors and was Chair of Women’s Golf at Columbia Country Club.

After a four-year return to Paris where I was secretary general of the private sector advisory group for the OECD and my subsequent retirement, we moved to Ponte Vedra Beach where she was active in the Sawgrass Women’s Club, as a sustainer in the Junior League and honed her skills at the bridge table. Wow, what a life!       

A Memorial Service for Gail will be at 2:00PM, Friday, December 9th, 2022 at Christ Church in Ponte Vedra Beach, Florida.