Gail Erwin Jergensen was born at a young age in North Platte, Nebraska, on Nov. 22, 1939. He took off on his final flight at 7:27 am on September 14, 2025, at 85 years of age.

Gail was the first born of Glen & Florence "Pat" (Gale) Jergensen. The family moved from North Platte to Farragut, Idaho, while Glen was in Navy training from 1944-1945. When Glen deployed, Pat and her three children at the time (Gail, Gary, Joyce) headed to Tuthill, South Dakota, where they stayed with her brother, William Gale. When Glen returned from war, the family built a home in North Platte, Nebraska, where Gail spent the rest of his childhood and youth. As North Platte was a railroad town, he would often chase the trains as they chuffed their way through town until his legs couldn't pump fast enough to keep up.

During his school years, Gail pursued math and the physical sciences. He also marched in the band and played clarinet. He worked in a local grocery store for most of high school. Despite sharing a room with Gary for almost all of their youth, they retained a deep friendship and camaraderie. Gail had a lifetime love of books, trains, planes, and most things relating to new and emerging technology. This love led to his building several models by hand, which at the time meant carving them entirely from wood.

Gail attended Bethany Nazarene College in Oklahoma starting in 1958, where he was active in the Student Council, serving as Treasurer his freshman year. Here he met and wooed Irene Kindall, and they married on Aug 25, 1961. Gail earned his Bachelors degree in Chemistry at BNC in 1963. Subsequently, he continued his education at the University of Oklahoma, obtaining a Masters in Biochemistry. They joined and faithfully attended the local Church of the Nazarene, a practice that continued throughout Gail's life.

Gail took a position with Celanese Chemical in Bay City, Texas, in 1966. He found that the work of chemistry was not as interesting to him as the learning had been, so when the opportunity came to work in the emerging field of computers, he joined IBM in 1969 and spent the next quarter century with the company, enjoying the work of data management from the start. As he often jested, IBM didn't mean International Business Machines, it meant, "I've Been Moved."  So, of course, the very first thing was moving from coastal Texas to the mountains of Denver, Colorado. Sons Eric and Girard were both born here. Gail’s love of flying led to his earning a Private Pilot license and their moving to Van Aire, a community with a shared runway space where he had his own plane, a Piper Cherokee.

IBM sent Gail across the Rockies to Salt Lake City, Utah in 1979. The family found a house in the foothills that projected out over the hill on stilts for an incredible view of the Salt Lake valley. Continuing to indulge his love of books, he installed a custom, 25' tall bookcase with a central ladder into the landing of the switchback stairs. Cross country skiing was of particular interest during this time, with some hiking thrown in when there wasn’t snow on the ground. One particularly bad winter saw him on the roof, 50 feet above the ground, shoveling off the snow.

In 1984, IBM sent the family to Carrollton, Texas, a suburb of Dallas. Gail rediscovered a passion for bicycles and also started a minor obsession with race walking. Gail enjoyed passing joggers, and he made puns about "walking this way" when asked for directions and then zipped off for a short distance before returning to normal walking speeds. He turned down a promotion (and move) during his stay in Texas, to provide more stability in the family and to allow for both sons to enjoy a mostly continuous high school experience.

His final move with IBM brought Gail and Irene to Longmont, Colorado in 1992. Later he retired from IBM and finished his career working for StorageTek. Wanting a better view of the Rockies, Gail and Irene move across town to a hillside house. There, they set up a new homestead, added a studio for Irene, adjusted the landscape, "worked on the rock pile", built retaining walls, and finished up the basement.

Gail and Irene enjoyed many trips to see kids and grandkids, and they hosted many of the grand kids for "summer week." They also spent a good deal of time on the red Santana tandem bike or the Double Vision recumbent tandem bike, hitting all the garage sales within bicycle range. When Irene wasn't interested in a bike ride, Gail experimented with track standing and some stunt biking, spending many hours reviewing video tapes and learning the tricks. He also picked up hiking again, explored the foothills ,and learned all the names and locations of the nearby peaks. This culminated in Gail's climb of Long's Peak, a nearby fourteen-er.

Gail joined the Civil Air Patrol in 2006 and spent more than a decade in various roles, including outreach, training, mission support, search and rescue, and ground operations. For a while, he also performed technical support for Irene's piano studio, but as she began to reduce student load, Gail went on to discover a passion for weather formations on the mountains. If you talked to him, he likely told you about wall clouds at some point, and how they would indicate air patterns great for long-range gliding.

He was preceded in death by his parents Glen and Pat. He is survived by his wife of 64 years Irene, his sons Eric (Laura) and Girard (Amy), as well as 7 grandchildren, Eli, Riana, Galen, Audrey, Diamond, Liz, and Garrett, and one great-grandchild Timmy, brother Gary (Sue), sisters Joyce Nichols, Jan (Leon) Van Pelt, Pam Kaiser, and Patti (Gary) Bohannan, and a plentiful supply of nieces and nephews.

A memorial service will be held at 3 pm on Sunday, 28 September at Longmont Nazarene Church, where Gail and Irene served, attended, and were baptized. The address is 2111 Mountain View Ave, Longmont, CO 80501.

In lieu of flowers, donations can be made in Gail's honor to Mission Aviation Fellowship, www.maf.org.

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