A Woman Scorned

Marshall Gardiner's breath was a horse's snuffle. The 86-year-old man's eyelids fluttered as his irises rolled toward the ceiling of the plane.

"Are you okay?" J'Noel Gardiner asked a stupid question. Clearly, her husband was not. "Are you okay?"

Marshall seemed to hear the repeated question and recovered long enough to smile and nod. Then another seizure convulsed him. J'Noel called for a flight attendant, and two of them trained in first aid came with oxygen. Another phoned emergency crews at the Baltimore airport, fifteen minutes away.

One flight attendant held Marshall's wrist, finding a pulse. But on his neck, J'Noel's fingers felt nothing. His neck. It was at a funny angle, cocked to one side with Marshall sprawled across two seats. He needed to be spread out in the aisle. J'Noel looked at the two small women.

"Stand back," she said.

Then she heaved Marshall, 45 years older and six inches shorter than she, up from their cramped row of seats and over the rigid armrest. Gently, she laid him down in the narrow aisle. J'Noel reached for Marshall's neck again and located a final pulse. His wrist no longer throbbed. The flight attendants started CPR. In the harried minutes that followed, Marshall was passed to the airport paramedics and then to Baltimore's North Arundel Hospital, four miles away.

J'Noel took a cab. She didn't want to crowd the paramedics in the ambulance. While the emergency-room doctors labored over her husband, J'Noel waited alone. The nurse said things didn't look good and offered to help her make phone calls; J'Noel called Marshall's brother and son. Eventually, the nurse escorted her to the trauma room. The trauma was over. Marshall Gardiner's body lay on a gurney beneath an umbrella spotlight, surrounded by the electronic equipment that had failed to revive his aged body. A tube protruded from his mouth.

J'Noel looked at Marshall for a minute. Then she crawled onto the gurney with him. It was her last gesture, a thank you to the man who had loved her and made her, finally, a woman. Mrs. Marshall Gardiner.

It would be her last moment of peace.

The love story of Marshall and J'Noel Gardiner is recorded not in poetic verse or emotional diary entries but in depositions mediated by attorneys whose questions were designed to discredit the couple's marriage. The relationship has drawn the kind of scrutiny only the legal system can generate, provoking a brand of publicity Peoplemagazine and the syndicated "News of the Weird" love to provide. There was a reason J'Noel could manhandle her dying husband on the plane: She was once a man.

When Marshall Gardiner died, he left millions of dollars but no will. Under Kansas law, half of his estate should have gone to his wife. But Marshall's son, Joseph, has been fighting to receive all the estate's proceeds, arguing that his father's marriage was illegal in Kansas.

Judges have ruled for both sides. In January 2000, Leavenworth County District Judge Gunnar Sundby determined that, despite her sex-reassignment surgery, J'Noel remained a man, nullifying her marriage to Marshall. That decision awarded the entire estate to Joe Gardiner. But in May, the state appeals court reversed that decision, saying the marriage was valid and that J'Noel was a widow who deserved her half. Joe Gardiner appealed.

When the Kansas Supreme Court weighs in on the matter after a December 4 hearing, the decision could have a profound impact on the legal rights of transsexuals throughout the United States.

J'Noel declined to speak to the Pitch for this story, citing concern that the publicity could hurt her chance for a fair hearing. But she has told her story in sworn depositions, and the court file contains hundreds of pages of details, including medical records describing exactly how her penis was removed and the skin restitched to create a vagina (and the kind of douche she used to help it heal). The file also offers insights into the emotional nature of J'Noel and Marshall's relationship. Legal briefs also have been filed by attorneys for both sides arguing about whether J'Noel's surgeries actually changed her sex.

J'Noel and Marshall met in May 1998 at a Park University Founders Day reception at a house north of the river. Marshall had earned an invitation because of his donations to his alma matter -- more than $200,000 by some estimates; J'Noel was an instructor in the business department at the college. While other guests snacked on hors d'oeuvres, Marshall and J'Noel introduced themselves and chatted about investments. J'Noel, then 40, taught finance. Marshall, 85, had finances.

The next Monday, Marshall called J'Noel and asked her to a banquet Friday night at the Hyatt. He was, J'Noel said in her deposition, "affable and charming," representing the best of his chivalric generation. Remembering that night more than a year later, J'Noel couldn't help smiling, even while answering questions for attorneys.

Marshall was born on September 27, 1912, in Oskaloosa, Kansas, to Emmet and Alice Gardiner. When Marshall was eight, Emmet Gardiner moved his family to Leavenworth, where he wrote for the Leavenworth Times and served as postmaster. Marshall Gardiner grew up to write for the newspaper as well. He married Molly North in 1942, and together they reared their one son, Joseph M. Gardiner III. Marshall joined the Army during World War II, then moved his family to a hillside brick house on Olive Street. He later entered politics and was elected to the Kansas House of Representatives in 1956, where he served four years. He also chaired the Kansas Democratic Party and lost a bid for the U.S. House of Representatives.