Samuel Bowie Gardiner, 1941–2025
Samuel Bowie Gardiner ’63, a retired U.S. Air Force colonel and expert in war gaming and military strategy, died November 25, 2025, in Roanoke, VA, at the age of 84. Gardiner, influenced by the World War II service of his father at Omaha Beach and his uncle’s military service at the World War I Battle of the Marne, came of age in the echo of President Kennedy’s inauguration speech: “Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country.” With a career that spanned 55 years, he lived that ideal. Gardiner became an expert at conducting military simulations, or war games, intense immersions for strategic decision-making, which helped influence policy perspectives and security decisions in the U.S. and abroad.
Gardiner had been cadet commander of the AFROTC wing as an undergraduate at the University of Wisconsin when he went on active duty. He was on active duty less than four years when he was sent to the Pentagon, serving three tours there. He served in Thailand during the Vietnam War and was there during the Christmas 1972 bombing of North Vietnam. While there, he worked on plans for POW recovery in Laos. He also served two years at the NATO military headquarters in Belgium, Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe (SHAPE), as an aide to a German general officer. His last active duty assignment was at the National War College in Washington, D.C., where he conducted war games and was an enthusiastic and gifted teacher to military officers, eventually becoming chairman of the operations department. While there, one of his areas of focus was Central Europe.
A 1963 graduate of the University of Wisconsin, he went on to earn an MBA from California State University–Sacramento and a master’s degree in international relations from George Washington University.
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