Gordon

We’re back in the People room today to share a story about a man who was my friend for more than fifty years. Here are some of my memories of our experiences.

Perhaps the reason I knew more about Gordon than I actually knew Gordon himself was that he spent so much time on the move. By my recollection here are the states where he lived at various times: Arizona, the Bahama Islands, South Carolina, Alabama, Idaho, Georgia, Montana, Iowa, Oklahoma, Colorado, Florida, Tennessee, not necessarily in that order. He called some of those states his home on more than one occasion.

Gordon was born in Arizona in 1941 to parents who were working in Christian ministry. In the mid to late ‘40s they answered the call of their church to serve as missionaries to the Bahama Islands. Gordon could not recall to me much about his life in the Bahamas except being barefoot all the time, and palm trees everywhere. Around 1950 his father responded to a call to become the pastor of a church in Montana.

Most of Gordon’s ‘coming-of-age’ years were lived along the Bitterroot River in the Bitterroot Valley in the Bitterroot Mountains on the eastern range of the Rockies near the state line between Montana and Idaho. That’s where Gordon would acquire his love of fishing and hunting, and where he learned how to grow up outdoors. Through the years, Gordon would never miss an opportunity to reminisce about his days along the Bitterroot.

At a young age Gordon determined that he would be a minister of the Gospel. He would attend a church-affiliated college in South Carolina where he met Norma. They married in the early ‘60s, finished their college degrees, and moved down to Georgia, to Norma’s hometown of Waycross. After Gordon received his ordination and pastoral license, they accepted an invitation to pastor a start-up church in Huntsville, Alabama. That’s where in 1971 we first crossed paths with Gordon and Norma Bennett. For two years we became very close, forging a lasting friendship. Then the headquarters office announced that the start-up church would be closing within a few months, so Gordon started looking for other opportunities. He soon found one with a different denomination looking for a pastor at a church in Idaho.

A few months after they arrived in Melba, Idaho, Gordon called me one Monday morning in December. He said they had their regular Sunday Evening service the night before, then sometime around midnight he was awakened by the sound of a loud explosion next door to the parsonage: The old steam boiler in the church basement had exploded and had blown up the building along with it. He described their former church now as a ‘pile of rubble.’ He was calling to ask me if I could make a trip to Idaho and start to make him some architectural plans for a new church facility. In a few days I was getting off an airplane at the Boise, Idaho airport into a bright, sunny day, with the air temperature well below zero.

Gordon, Norma, and I spent two days and nights visiting and talking about their plans for a new church. I went home and started working on the plans while Gordon cleaned up the rubble pile. He worked on the building project for over a year, calling me frequently. Then, one day Connie and I accepted their invitation to come for the dedication. The building Gordon built turned out to be a simple, elegant, well-done, country church facility, especially fitting for the natural lifestyle of southwest Idaho.     

Besides being a gospel preacher and a pastor, Gordon was a skilled builder with knowledge of all the trades. Beyond that, Gordon was also a student, a writer, and published author of children’s books. He was known among all his friends for keeping current with his annual, detailed newsletter, mailed to nearly one hundred of his closest friends all over the country.

In Iowa he took an administrative position with an accredited, church-related college where he finished his masters degree. A couple of years later he was building houses for sale in Ada, Oklahoma while working on his PhD at the University of Oklahoma at Norman. From Ada, they moved west to pastor a small church at Lamar, Colorado. That didn’t work out well for Norma’s health so they moved down to Phoenix, Arizona for the ‘dry’ heat of the desert.

The single, greatest adventure that Gordon and Norma were involved in was their dog kennel and boys ranch in Phoenix. In the mid-1980s they bought a struggling dog kennel business, and an adjacent tract of several acres with an existing farmhouse building. There they were able to develop their boys ranch where at-risk and wayward boys could have a disciplined, Christian home and receive personal care and mentoring. Gordon’s experience and credentials enabled him to work with social organizations, sometimes the juvenal courts, and mostly frustrated parents, to house up to ten boys who would come and live at the ranch for varying lengths of time. Gordon would use horses and dogs for the boys to care for and to grow in responsibility and maturity. At its height, the ranch had over forty horses and about fifty dog kennels. They had a large, diverse staff of workers to operate the businesses and to provide proper care for the boys. Gordon and Norma owned and operated the kennels and the ranch for over thirteen years, growing both businesses into successful ministries. Though they never had any children of their own, some of the boys they took in at the boys ranch stayed in touch with them for many years, even up to the present day.

Eventually, the outward growth of Phoenix would force them to sell their properties and they made the decision to invest in two hundred acres in Colorado. They moved all their horses and intended to build a new boys ranch there until they were informed that the county government would not approve their plan to bring at-risk boys into their community. The new boys ranch would not be built in that area, so they sold the property and the horses and left Colorado.

They were back in Waycross for a year or two when one day they decided to move to the Bitterroot Valley in Montana, Gordon’s former home area. They thought the mountain air would be good for Norma’s breathing malady. He went there planning to re-start his home building business, but he said that did not work out. Then the wild fires in the mountains started flaring up and it took a year to bring them under control. Smoke from the fires hung in the air for many months exacerbating Norma’s breathing difficulties to the point where it would force them to leave the Bitterroot Valley.

Later, Gordon and Norma found themselves back in Oklahoma at a town called Clinton where they took the pastorate of a small church. Seems the church asked him to come because they had heard through their denomination that he was a ‘builder’ and they needed someone to spearhead the construction of their new church. Gordon told them he would stay for two years which should be long enough to build the facility. But, for various reasons, the project kept being delayed. He had moved all of his construction equipment to Clinton and rented a warehouse for storage and work space. Meanwhile, one day there was a lightning storm which struck the home of one of the church’s elders, setting it on fire, burning it to the ground. So, he asked Gordon if he would build him a new house. Gordon said it appeared he was not going to be busy for a while, so he built the house. The church project continued to be delayed, and at the end of Gordon’s two-year commitment he told them he was leaving.

A few months later they came to our house, and told us they were considering moving to our area in Tennessee. Of course, we welcomed them to stay with us while they were firming up their decision, and making arrangements for housing. They ended up staying with us for a few months and we had many evenings sharing our stories.

Over the next six to eight months, they made the 1,600-mile round trip several times pulling trailers between western Oklahoma and middle Tennessee. Gordon rented several hundred square feet in self-storage facilities for their household items, including his 8-feet wide set of moose horns, and his mule deer head mount, plus his construction equipment.

Just when it appeared he was ready to re-start his home building business, everything suddenly fell apart—the bank cancelled their financing pledges. Totally frustrated, Gordon set about unwinding all the arrangements he had put in place. He consigned his construction equipment to an auction house where it all sold for many thousands of dollars. Soon, they were on the road again, going back to Georgia. They bought a small house in Waycross and planned to stay.

A year later they visited a friend in Florida and, within a few months, they decided to move down to Hobe Sound. Gordon was a collector. Besides all the tools, construction equipment, and excess materials he had saved over the years, he also collected books. His library grew as they moved from place to place, and they had carried it all in a large cargo trailer everywhere they went. While they were in Florida, he decided to donate his library to Hobe Sound Bible College–over five thousand volumes. 

In Hobe Sound they were pleased with the church they were attending as they made new friends. But then the Covid-19 pandemic set in and 200 people in that church—most of them elderly retirees—were admitted to the hospital where many did not survive. It wasn’t long until Gordon and Norma would decide to move back to the house they still owned in Waycross.

By this time, Gordon and Norma are approaching eighty years of age, and the stifling, high humidity heat of South Georgia was unbearable for Norma. They placed their house with an agent and it sold within days. They would make their final cross-country trip back to Arizona at Sun City where they could live in a gated community for seniors. Gordon called me once to tell me about their move back to the desert.

One evening in February of this year, Norma called and left me a message that Gordon’s health was failing. We returned her call the next day and she filled in some of the details. Gordon had never complained about pain, but recently he told her his back was hurting. After a few days he went to the doctor where a full-body scan showed advanced cancer over much of his body. She said he was very near death so, two days later, we checked back with her. Norma just said Gordon had gone to Heaven.

My good friend, one of a kind, passed away February 27, 2023, at age 81.   

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