Man on a Ladder

Gordon W. Bess–Danville’s oldest man at 92 and climbing

By Sharon Lakey

For pho­to album, gath­ered and shared by Lin­da Bess, Gor­don and Ger­ry’s daugh­ter,  click here: Gor­don Bess

Gor­don Bess is an orga­nized man. He cred­its this to his twen­ty-year mil­i­tary career. He was born and raised in Meri­den, Con­necti­cut, known as the Sil­ver City. His younger broth­er, Ronald, was also a mil­i­tary man, join­ing the Marine Corps and serv­ing dur­ing the Kore­an War. Ronald is still liv­ing in Meri­den. Gordon’s younger sis­ter, Lois, died in Jan­u­ary 2004 at the age of 81.

Wal­ter Bess, their father, worked in the sil­ver indus­try before tak­ing up paint­ing and wall­pa­per­ing as an occu­pa­tion. “He had an excel­lent rep­u­ta­tion as a clean work­er, and he wall­pa­pered the best hous­es in the area,” said Gor­don, obvi­ous­ly impressed by his father’s skills. From him, he learned how to wall­pa­per and paint, a skill he prac­ticed when he and Ger­ry, his wife, bought the house in Danville in 1968. The big, yel­low house on Brain­erd Street was pur­chased from Fred Blakeslee, who worked as an artist for a rail­road mag­a­zine. Gor­don remem­bers that when he and Ger­ry toured the house it was full of rail­road art­work that Blakeslee had paint­ed. Blakeslee left one incom­plete paint­ing for the cou­ple, and it appears in some of the fam­i­ly pho­tos that Gor­don shared.

Gordon’s mil­i­tary career began when he entered the ser­vice in 1938 from Meri­den and served at Ft. Wright on Fish­ers Island, NY, in the Army artillery. He then attend­ed offi­cer-can­di­date school , from which he grad­u­at­ed in 1942 as a 2nd LT. Dur­ing WWII, he served in the Pana­ma Canal zone with an anti-air­craft unit. Main­tain­ing the Pana­ma Canal was crit­i­cal to the war effort, so crit­i­cal that 40-mm anti-air­craft shells were shipped from Lon­don to keep air and water con­nec­tions for Amer­i­ca and its allies safe. He was sta­tioned right on the locks for the dura­tion of the war. When the war end­ed, he was ranked as a Major.

Gor­don met his wife, Ger­ry, when he was being processed out of the Army at Fort Dix, New Jer­sey, in the sum­mer of 1946.. She had served in the Women’s Army Corps (WACs) in the postal ser­vice APO New York and also as a cook and bak­er at Ft. Oglethor­pe, GA. He was in the process of re-enlist­ing when they met on a bus that was going to New York City. As Ger­ry told the sto­ry, Gor­don was on the bus in a seat by him­self, and Ger­ry was look­ing for a seat. “Is this seat tak­en,” she asked.

“Does it look like it is?” he replied.

She sat down and, accord­ing to Ger­ry, “it was love at first sight.” Gor­don and Ger­ry enjoyed see­ing the sights of New York togeth­er over the next six weeks. He pro­posed; she accepted.

Since Gor­don was being shipped back to Pana­ma short­ly, tele­phone calls were exchanged with Gordon’s par­ents intro­duc­ing Ger­ry as his future wife. Prepa­ra­tions were made for Ger­ry to stay with her future in-laws in Meri­den until arrange­ments could be made for her trav­el to Pana­ma to join Gor­don. Ger­ry and her future moth­er-in-law, Mil­dred, got along famous­ly from the begin­ning, a rela­tion­ship that con­tin­ued until Mildred’s pass­ing in 1981. She also got a chance to vis­it Dex­ter, Maine, to vis­it her own fam­i­ly before fly­ing to Pana­ma where she and Gor­don were mar­ried. They remained there for four years. Gor­don had a reserve com­mis­sion as Major and served in office head­quar­ters as admin­is­tra­tor at Ft. Clay­ton in Pana­ma. Daugh­ters Lin­da (b. 1948) and Lau­ra (b. 1950) were born in the Canal Zone.

Being a mil­i­tary fam­i­ly, they spent time in dif­fer­ent states, includ­ing Okla­homa where son Richard was wel­comed ( b. 1954), and North Car­oli­na where son Ken­neth joined the fam­i­ly (b. 1959). After retir­ing from the ser­vice, Gor­don and fam­i­ly moved back to Meri­den, CT, where their son Alan (b. 1961) and daugh­ter Judy (1962) were born.

In 1955, the fam­i­ly was sta­tioned on the island of Tai­wan. Gor­don took part in teach­ing at an artillery school that trained the Tai­wanese army, who were hold­ing their own against main­land Chi­na at the time. Gor­don shipped out ahead of the fam­i­ly to line up hous­ing, so Ger­ry was charged with facil­i­tat­ing her own trav­el itin­er­ary with three young chil­dren in tow, Richard being just a baby. Lin­da has a let­ter writ­ten by Ger­ry where she describes how she got the three chil­dren to New York, board­ed a plan in Newark (after their flight from LaGuardia was can­celled) to fly to Cal­i­for­nia where they board­ed a mil­i­tary trans­port ship to take them to Tai­wan. Lau­ra and Lin­da enjoyed spend­ing time watch­ing west­erns in a small pro­jec­tion room set up to occu­py the kids aboard. Lau­ra, par­tic­u­lar­ly, was enthralled with the movie pro­jec­tion­ist, who wore shiny black boots. Dur­ing the trip, Richard, Lin­da and Ger­ry were sea­sick; Lau­ra was not, but she remem­bers Lin­da com­ing down with the chick­en pox just pri­or to disembarking.

Upon reach­ing Tai­wan, the fam­i­ly first lived in a pink house, off base. Most mem­o­rable was the smell ema­nat­ing from the field owned by the neigh­bor­ing local farmer, who fer­til­ized the field with human every day beside the house. “They use every­thing there,” said Gor­don. “Every­thing. And he had the most beau­ti­ful field of pro­duce.” As Gor­don was often away on maneu­vers, Ger­ry took care of the house and the chil­dren, some­times hav­ing help from two Tai­wanese maids who helped around the house and with lan­guage bar­ri­ers. After the pink house, they moved to a mil­i­tary com­plex that was made of group­ings of small hous­es, built for the Amer­i­can mil­i­tary fam­i­lies by the Bank of Taiwan.

When Gor­don retired from the ser­vice in 1958, he and the fam­i­ly moved in with Gordon’s par­ents, who still lived in the house in which he grew up. Over the next four years, he took advan­tage of an offer of col­lege from the mil­i­tary and attend­ed Cen­tral Con­necti­cut State Col­lege from 1958–1962. He received a degree in math­e­mat­ics. To sup­port his grow­ing fam­i­ly, he worked sum­mers as a straw boss in Connecticut’s tobac­co fields. Around the same time ren­o­va­tions were com­plet­ed on the fam­i­ly home, which extend­ed an upstairs bed­room (liv­ing room) out into a kitch­enette, bath­room and bed­room for Gordon’s par­ents, a tem­po­rary arrange­ment until rooms opened up in the Wal­ter Bradley Home for the Aged in Meri­den. Mil­dred and Wal­ter enjoyed the pri­va­cy and com­fort of their lit­tle upstairs “apart­ment,” but also enjoyed the com­pa­ny of Gor­don, Ger­ry and their grand­chil­dren. Mil­dred and Ger­ry spent quite a bit of time togeth­er. Mil­dred loved to hang laun­dry out to dry and after­noon teatime was a favorite activity.

Gor­don taught school in Con­necti­cut for six years, but dur­ing the sum­mer months, he and Ger­ry used to dri­ve up to Ver­mont and scout around the lit­tle towns for avail­able hous­es. Dur­ing these dri­ves, they vis­it­ed St. Johns­bury Acad­e­my and sub­mit­ted an appli­ca­tion. In 1968, he was offered a job on the fac­ul­ty as a math­e­mat­ics instruc­tor, and he stayed for 14 years.

Need­ing to house his fam­i­ly, he found the house on Brain­erd Street in Danville. “It was a well-built, sol­id house ‚” said Gor­don. “It was close to the Acad­e­my and Danville had a good rep­u­ta­tion.” When they moved here, Lin­da was 20 and Lau­ra 18. They attend­ed col­leges in Ver­mont, but the rest of the chil­dren are grad­u­ates of Danville High School. Of the six chil­dren, four of them had mil­i­tary expe­ri­ence as well. Ken­neth was a Marine, Richard served in the Army and both Alan and Lin­da served in the Navy.

Ger­ry loved liv­ing in Danville. She worked in the kitchen at school, was a mem­ber of the Pope Library Board of Trustees, Home Dem and a busy Pythi­an sis­ter. “She loved peo­ple and chil­dren,” said Lin­da. Gor­don joined in on com­mu­ni­ty affairs as well. One of the most mem­o­rable and time con­sum­ing was being a school board mem­ber when the school was dig­ging out of a finan­cial jum­ble. “There was no wrong-doing or any­thing like that. It was just a messy book­keep­ing sys­tem that need­ed iron­ing out,” said Gor­don. He worked with Dr. Marc Hull and accoun­tant Deb­bie Blan­chard on this effort and spent many hours look­ing over and sort­ing out the records. In addi­tion, for many years he pro­vid­ed rou­tine main­te­nance as well as finan­cial book­keep­ing for the Senior Hous­ing build­ing. He was pleased when they were able to pay off their fed­er­al hous­ing loan five years ear­li­er than required.

One would also see Gor­don march with the Amer­i­can Legion in every parade on hol­i­days. He gave his time in tend­ing the flower beds around the flag­pole, the war mon­u­ments and the flow­ers in front of the town hall. He raised and low­ered the flag every day for years on the library lawn. And he kept an immac­u­late house on Brain­erd, a nice large lawn and impec­ca­ble yel­low paint on a very tall house. Bet­ty Hutchins, who drove school bus for Danville for many years, told him she would have her heart in her stom­ach on days she would dri­ve by and see Gor­don on the 32-foot lad­der at the peak of his house. “I’ve giv­en up the lad­der,” said Gor­don with a slight smile.

As Gor­don has achieved the hon­or of being Danville’s old­est man—92 in March of 2013—I asked him for his advice to us younger peo­ple. His answer was clear and pru­dent: “Live care­ful­ly with­in your means. Don’t get over­whelmed in debt to keep up with the Jones’. Take part in com­mu­ni­ty activ­i­ties. Accom­plish some­thing, even if it is small, that requires your phys­i­cal involve­ment. Be part of your town.”