Gary Allan Player

Gary Allan Player passed away on December 23, 2025, after a five-year adventure with atypical Parkinson’s. True to himself, Gary met it with determination, calm, a steady sense of humor, and a deep love for time spent with family and friends.

Gary was born on October 25, 1951, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and grew up in Cherry Hill, New Jersey, with his parents, Mary Cecilia and Joseph Eugene Player, alongside his five siblings: Jack, Jeff, Sandra, Thomas, and Sharon. From an early age, Gary was always moving. He was a record-holding swimmer, played football in high school, and later attended Wagner College on a track scholarship.

In his early twenties, Gary worked as a carpenter-builder and traveled across the United States, spending winters in Idaho with his brother, who was logging at the time. Family and friends heard many stories from those years — snowshoeing through forests and climbing tall, swaying pines.

In the late seventies, Gary bought a farm in Tennessee, accompanied by his loyal dog, Bud. That chapter sparked a lifelong love of gardening and the outdoors, a passion he passed down to his three children, Nikki, Eric, and Katharine. Gary and Amy met and married in 1979 and built a family life full of biking, camping, hiking, identifying and admiring trees and wood of every kind, and cooking big meals together, often with Lucinda Williams’s music playing in the background. Gary was devoted to his daily routine: coffee, the news (in particular the latest political farces), and toast.

Gary’s creativity and eye for design live on in many places, including much of the Emerson Waldorf School in Chapel Hill, as well as numerous homes throughout the Durham–Chapel Hill area and South Florida. He was always just a phone call or a quick sketch away when someone needed help with a remodel or design idea, especially his kids.

The last ten years of Gary’s life were filled with adventures: camping trips and explorations through New York, California, Florida, and Chincoteague, and countless hours outfitting his van as a camper long before van life was trendy.

Gary will be remembered for his steadiness, creativity, love of nature, and the way he made space for people — around a table, on a trail, or over a set of drawings. A celebration of life will be planned for 2026.