Mini-bio: Uncle Gordon

When I was a child, children addressed adults either as Mr. or Mrs. or aunt and uncle. Since we had no family in California, my parents’ friends became my aunts and uncles. One of the most memorable was my “Uncle Gordon”.

Gordon Nutson knew and taught me that the best way to be a nonconformist where it counts was to conform where it doesn’t count. Gordon was a “peacenik” in business suit and tie. He once told me that wearing a suit made it much easier to explain to a group of businessmen why he stood silently by while others saluted the flag. His nonconformist message was credible, he said, precisely because he had already gained their respect through his dress and his business practices. He was one of them and could be trusted and believed, even if his message was, for them, unconventional.

Uncle Gordon understood that in dress, as in language, different occasions and venues require different approaches. No more would he conduct business in casual clothing than he would work in his pasture or clean his pigeon cages in a suit.

Precisely because he dressed as a conventional businessman, Gordon was able to speak his message of peace and justice, concepts foreign to many of his colleagues. He was active in the peace and civil rights movements and agencies of social and economic justice such as Habitat for Humanity and Heifer Project.

Business, in his case, real estate, was as much a commitment to Gordon as was the cause of peace and justice. He was one of a small group of World War II conscientious objectors who, upon release from Civilian Public Service, came to Modesto and on a shoestring started a successful company, Wolverine Real Estate. Although he was highly regarded in the real estate community as a competent businessman, his keynote in business was ethics. Gordon counseled his agents that making the sale was secondary to dealing ethically with the customer. As a broker in Modesto in the days of de facto segregation, Gordon refused to follow the “gentlemen’s codes” that maintained segregated housing. In fact, he proactively worked with people of color in purchasing homes and integrating neighborhoods where others would not. His message was that while we should change bad laws, we can't wait for laws to change to make things right. Would my uncle Gordon, that little, old white man from Michigan, have been on the front line of the immigration marches were he still alive?

I will always remember Uncle Gordon for his clean-shaven cheeks and his crisp brown suits, his slicked-back red hair and Barber Shop Quartet performances, and most of all, his chuckles and full-bodied laughter when something tickled his funny bone. And being the jokester that he was, he found many things funny. My son Nebur, from the time he was big enough to talk, was invited to the occasional “business lunch” with my Dad and Uncle Gordon. He remembers Uncle Gordon’s unique way of punctuating his points by drawing on napkins. Gordon did nothing half way. These lunches often ended with pencil-marked napkins covering the table. I have never had occasion to meet with Gordon when he was not excited about something.

Uncle Gordon did have his moments of political incorrectness. A dedicated member of the Modesto Human Rights Commission, he was always alert for violations. However, being a product of his time, he once fell on the wrong side in a big way. On this occasion, a widow brought a complaint that the Old Fisherman’s Club had canceled her long term membership after her husband died, as membership was restricted to men, who were allowed to bring along their wives. Once her husband died, the widow was no longer welcome. What a human interest story! However, Gordon did not understand that feminism was also a human rights issue. His flippant and certainly impolitic remark: “woman should be in the kitchen making cornbread” was published far and wide. In fact, folksinger, Tom Hunter, who read the comment elsewhere, wrote a song about the infamous cornbread misogynist. So when the folksinger came to Modesto, this was one of the songs he sang. And to make it even more interesting, it was Gordon who volunteered to drive Tom back to the Bay Area after the concert. What I wouldn’t have given to be a passenger in that car!

The last time I saw Uncle Gordon before his final illness was at Modesto High School. At first I didn’t recognize him standing outside the office, now a tiny old man, surrounded by teenagers. The secretary laughed and told me that Mr. Nutson had come to school with a question. He told her that the student who worked on his “ranch” had asked him for money to rent a tuxedo for the prom. Gordon then told the secretary that in his day it was good enough to wear a suit to a dance, to which the secretary explained that boys today rent tuxedos because many do not own suits. Gordon responded that that was good enough for him; he just always needed an explanation for things. I hurried out, pleased to tell some of my students that they were talking with my Uncle Gordon. Gordon’s conversation with the students continued and they invited him to lunch. Of course, later that day one of my students informed me that my “uncle”, then 92 years old, had flirted with her, no surprise to me. But she also remarked that she wished that her abuela had such a young and positive outlook on life. Within two months, Uncle Gordon died of congestive heart failure.

My Uncle Gordon, all 5’ 2” of him, was a big man with a personality painted in Technicolor. As a businessman, peace and human rights activist, musician, week-end farmer, friend, and even as an occasional, gentle misogynist 20 years behind the times, he lived his life large. I won’t forget the lessons he taught me.