‘New Found Glory’ founder and guitarist Chad Gilbert dead at 45

He slipped away the way he’d always hoped to live: on his own terms, wrapped in love, without fanfare or fear. At 45, Chad Gilbert’s body finally surrendered after years of brutal cancer battles, but his spirit had long since decided what really mattered. Not the tours, the charts, or the screaming crowds—though he cherished all of it—but the small, ordinary miracles at home. Bedtime stories. Inside jokes. His daughter’s laughter echoing down the hall.

To the world, he was the driving force of New Found Glory, the soundtrack to countless teenage heartbreaks and healing. To those closest, he was the man who somehow made terminal illness look like a lesson in gratitude. He kept playing. Kept loving. Kept showing up. In the end, the records will spin, the tributes will fade, but the life he built in the shadows of the stage is what truly refuses to die.