00:00:00GORDON: I think my background is quite different from other people that
you've--you've interviewed--
FERNHEIMER: Yeah.
GORDON: --that went to Kentucky. This is something I just got recognized with.
It's very interesting.
FERNHEIMER: Oh, this is nice. Well, before we get, uh, started officially--now
that I've got--it looks like our levels are pretty good, um, I'm going to go
ahead and introduce myself, and introduce you, and name this as part of the
collection. And here's--if you want a hard copy of the questions--
GORDON: Yeah.
FERNHEIMER: --that's easier. This is nice. We're--uh, this is from The
Tennessean. Um, so, uh, today is June 21st, 2017. My name is Janice W.
Fernheimer, Associate Professor of Writing, Rhetoric and Digital Studies, and
Director of Jewish Studies at the University of Kentucky. And it is my great
pleasure to be here in Nashville at the Gordon Group with Joel
00:01:00Gordon, uh, to conduct an interview for the Jewish Heritage Fund for Excellence
Jewish Kentucky Collection, housed at the Louie B. Nunn--Louie B. Nunn Center
for Oral History at the University of Kentucky. Um, thank you so much, Joel, for
a lovely lunch--
GORDON: --mm--
FERNHEIMER: --and for a wonderful walk through this beautiful scrapbook that
you've kept over the years. Um, I really enjoyed reading your autobiography, and
I learned a lot from it. And I'm so grateful that you're willing to spend a few
hours with me today and tomorrow, just talking about your life and what it was
like, um, growing up in Crofton, going to the University of Kentucky in the
1950s. Um, and I'm hoping, uh, that for the official purposes of this interview,
you'd be willing to state your name at birth, and when and where you were born.
GORDON: Okay, my name is Joel, middle initial C, Gordon, G-O-R-D-O-N. I was born
on January the 5th, 1929, in Crofton, Kentucky. And Crofton is a town
00:02:00of approximately six hundred people in Christian County, Kentucky, uh, easily
identified with (??) ten miles north of Hopkinsville. And I was born at home
with--uh--out the benefit of--of a physician. And so, it's--uh, started early.
And, uh, I guess life in a small town has, uh, always been very important to me.
FERNHEIMER: Yeah. Um, so you were born at home without the assistance of a
physician?GORDON: It was--a physician came, but I--I was born before he got there.
FERNHEIMER: So, your dad delivered you?GORDON: Well, he--he--he was there,
anyway. I don't know what he did, but he was there. --(laughter)-- He--he
had--he probably had, uh, no knowledge of what to do, but he probably assisted
the best he could.
FERNHEIMER: Um, for the record, would you please state the names and occupations
of your parents, as well as the name and the location of your parents' store in Crofton?
GORDON: Okay. Now my--my dad, named Gordon, was a far-fetched (??)
00:03:00name. My father's name was George Benjamin Agurshin Baehr (??) Pialoskie,
P-I-A-L-O-S-K-I-E. He came to live with an uncle who brought him over--Mount
Carmel, Pennsylvania, which was a coal mining community. My father live--he had
a store, and they was liv--warmth--heated by furnace. My father slept in the
basement on a cot with the rats, as he said, and put coal in the furnace. But he
learned over a period of time to speak about four languages. And this was a
group of immigrants from all over the world. And finally, he--promoted him up to
be a salesman. And he did that, and looked at him one day and he said, "With the
name Pialoskie, you'll never get anywheres in this world. I'm gonna change your
name." And there was a little town down the road named Gordonsville (sic),
Pennsylvania. He says, "I like that town, I'm gonna name you Gordon." So, he
named my father Gordon, and the rest of the family, as they came
00:04:00over, took the same name. Now what my dad never understood, and my uncle--his
uncle's name was Smigelski (??). And he never changed his name,
so--(laughter)--he wondered "why he changed my name, but didn't change his." So,
he kept the name. He had several kids, but they were all Smigelskis.
FERNHEIMER: Huh.
GORDON: Yeah. (??)
FERNHEIMER: That's interesting!
GORDON: It's, uh--it's, uh--you know, Gordon, I've had all kinds of inquiries
what Scots group I came from. Gordon is basically a Scotch name, but, uh, that
isn't where I came from. Came from Eastern Europe.
FERNHEIMER: And did your dad speak Yiddish? Was that one of the four languages
he spoke?
GORDON: He spoke Yiddish, he spoke German, spoke some Russian, and some Polish.
And, uh, could turn that into some Czech and so forth and so on, so he could
communicate with people fairly well. He spoke Yiddish very well. I never could
speak it well, but I could understand it. Uh, so, he--he kind of--gave me some
key words that I've stuck with all the years and I understand pretty
00:05:00well. Always thought--I spent some time in Germany in the Air Force, and I
thought I could speak German because I could speak Yiddish. It worked sometimes,
sometime it didn't work.
FERNHEIMER: Yeah.
GORDON: But, uh, the time he had--he was settled in Cape--you want me to go
farther here?
FERNHEIMER: --um--
GORDON: --why--what--you know, I don't wanna get you off your questions.
FERNHEIMER: No, no, I'm all right. Keep going.
GORDON: He--uh, where he got--Kentucky, he had a brother that came over, was
brought over by his uncle, too. And his uncle--his brother went to visit some
people in Hopkinsville, Kentucky. And they had a--a--
FERNHEIMER: Do you know why? How he ended up visiting those folks in Hopkinsville?
GORDON: He had--they were--he had a cousin.
FERNHEIMER: Okay.
GORDON: And they had a--a young lady that came from Europe that they were trying
to find a match for--
FERNHEIMER: Ah!
GORDON: And that was my Aunt Leila (??), and they--they matched the two of them
up. And after they did, they decided he needed to have something to do, so they
set him up in business in a little town ten miles down the road, which was a
general, hmm, store. Uh, you know, when I say a general store, it
00:06:00wasn't pretty. It was messy. They did a lot of bartering. People brought
chickens and eggs and scrap iron and roots and metals and everything in, and
they traded for food or clothes.
FERNHEIMER: And this was your uncle?
GORDON: That was his uncle. Then my daddy came to visit him. And he was there
for a week, and he gets ready to go back--and said he took him to the train, and
said he started crying. And he said, "What's the problem?" He said, "You're the
only person I got in this world, you're running off and leaving me." So, he
says, "He got to me. I decided, okay, I didn't have anything I had to go back
for. I'm staying." And he stayed and went to work for him.
FERNHEIMER: And what town were they working in at that--
GORDON: Crofton, C-R-O-F--two N.
FERNHEIMER: So--
GORDON: C--C-R-O-F-T-O-N. It's in Christian County, Kentucky.
FERNHEIMER: Okay.
GORDON: Today, it's probably seven hundred people. At that time, it was, uh,
half African American and half white. Coal mining and farming. Uh, it's, uh--it
was in the western Kentucky coal fields. There's a lotta underground mines. So,
it was a--little different from eastern Kentucky, but I was, uh,
00:07:00mines that were owned by people from out of town.
FERNHEIMER: And did everyone shop at the store?
GORDON: Well, they--they had the choice. It was by--my daddy ended up opening
his own store, and his store was the same thing as my Uncle Frank. And they were
direct competition.
FERNHEIMER: Oh, really?
GORDON: And, uh, then, there was, uh, the company store. The coal company had a
store there that the miners--work--bought it in the company store. But
everything--nothing was bought with cash. The miners would come in and buy their
groceries for the week in clothes, (??) and they'd get paid in two weeks, and
they'd come pay you. The farmers would come in and run a ticket for a year. When
they sold their tobacco crops, they would pay. Now, if they--tobacco crops
wasn't very good, they couldn't pay. So, they'd pay what they could, start
another year, hoping it was going to be better. So, he kinda--he--he had a store
that my mother and father both worked in, nobody else. He went to work at
four-thirty, five o'clock every morning, seven days a week, and worked 'til nine
o'clock at night. Then, on Sundays, he'd come home at six o'clock.
00:08:00But the house was right across the street from the store, so he just had to walk
across the street. And we had--uh, we finally had indoor plumbing, but, uh, we
had to dig a cistern to have the cistern. The city didn't have waterworks. So,
it was a really interesting experience. Uh, the most business they ever did--not
the most money they ever made--the most business they ever did was sixty-five
thousand dollars a year.
FERNHEIMER: Um-hm.
GORDON: But they didn't spend any money. They saved.
FERNHEIMER: Yeah.
GORDON: And they would save with the idea that they wanted their son to have
something, and they accumulated enough to--to give me a start, which was,
uh--again, and (??) neither one of 'em ever took a vacation.
FERNHEIMER: Yeah.
GORDON: He--somebody say, you know, "You gonna take vacation now?"
-----------(??) "But don't you wanna go back to see where you come from?" He
said, (??) "No, thank you. I been there."
FERNHEIMER: So, I just want to clarify for a second: your father's uncle's store
was not--it was down the road, or it was also in Crofton?
00:09:00
GORDON: Oh, my father's brother?
FERNHEIMER: Yeah.
GORDON: He was right--right next door.
FERNHEIMER: Right next door in Crofton.
GORDON: So, right next door, like--Crofton had a main street--
FERNHEIMER: Okay.
GORDON: --which wasn't paved. It was--
FERNHEIMER: Okay.
GORDON: --was rock and mud. And they had a back street called Anderson Street,
and everything was there--was on that street. It was about six--six different
stores. Had a drugstore, had a--a--a hardware store, had a grocery store, and it
had the two Jew stores.
FERNHEIMER: Um-hm.
GORDON: And they was known as "the Jew stores." Now, it was quite different from
the book The Jew Stores. (sic) They were much more up--up-class.
FERNHEIMER: Um-hm.
GORDON: Uh, much bigger city, much--my dad worked in overalls every day.
FERNHEIMER: Did--did the African American members of Crofton also shop at the
Jew stores?
GORDON: Yes. Yes.
FERNHEIMER: Okay.
GORDON: That was a good part of their business.
FERNHEIMER: Um-hm.
GORDON: And they were--were very--my house, where I lived, the next house down
was--African American couple. And some of the things you understand,
00:10:00some things you don't. I--I was a pretty good basketball player. The Blacks had
a much better basketball team than we whites did, but we played together on the
playground, but never on a formal team.
FERNHEIMER: Oh, interesting.
GORDON: Did--didn't--didn't do that at all.
FERNHEIMER: Well, you--you talked about, in the book, that there--there are two
experiences that stood out to me about the interactions of Blacks and whites
over sports. And the first one, you were telling a story of--um, a man who you
admired a lot took you to your first baseball game.
GORDON: Th--that's right. A man named Croft who ran the poolroom in town.
FERNHEIMER: And it was an African American game.
GORDON: Right. And, now, (??) African American community had their own baseball
diamonds and played their own games.
FERNHEIMER: And what was it like to be an onlooker as a non-African American
person? Was it accepted? Was it--
GORDON: No, you put the (??)--you knew all the people and they knew you. And let
me say--if we could (??) cut off a minute?
FERNHEIMER: Yeah, hang on. Let me put us on pause, uh--
--(break in audio)--
GORDON: The gentleman that you were referring to, right, would--would call, tell
you--I--I--well, I was--this is--seven, eight years old, and I--I
00:11:00loved sports. And he'd take me out there, and we'd set--I'd sit between his legs
in the--out in the outfield, and my daddy always worried about me. So, he'd come
walking out there--it was about two miles out there. He'd walk out there to see
if I was okay. Once he saw me, he'd turn and go back. So, he just wanted to
satisfy hisself. So, we--the African American community had some great athletes,
and they played scheduled games among other African American teams. Now, we
had--when I gr--grew--got to be a teenager, we had America--a white team, which
was fairly good. But we, we didn't play the Black team, except in--Emancipation
Day was August the eighth, which is when, you know, Emancipation was signed. And
the people from Crofton who had gone to Detroit and Cincinnati and Indianapolis,
all the places during the war to work in the--in the defense industry would come
home for their friends. So, they'd have a big baseball game and
00:12:00barbecue and parade, and that day, the Blacks played the whites.
FERNHEIMER: All right.
GORDON: They--we would play them. There was a big event: we're gonna have the
Black against the whites. And the games all went off very well, everybody was
very happy. We knew each other, and it was, uh, it was nothing but--people come
in, where they'd decorate their cars, and they'd have music. And for a small
town, they had--had a--barbecues and big things, all in the Black neighborhood.
FERNHEIMER: Huh.
GORDON: And it was--it was interesting. It's--you know, my--my background is--I
don't know if you can say more liberal, but I was raised very much in
conjunction with African Americans. It wasn't--you know, maybe we didn't
socialize with them, but they were our customers in store--I knew everybody. We
visited, we talked, we played on the playground, and the people that was very
involved in raising me and so forth were all African Americans.
00:13:00
FERNHEIMER: Yeah, I was curious about that. You, uh--tell me for the record,
your mom's name and--
GORDON: My mother's name was Tilly.
FERNHEIMER: Tilly Gordon.
GORDON: Gordon. Tilly Kleinman (??) Gordon. She was a Kleinman before she got married.
FERNHEIMER: And she came from--
GORDON: Came from Nashville. And her family came from Russia.
FERNHEIMER: And--
GORDON: Her father.
FERNHEIMER: --your parents met in Nashville?
GORDON: No, they met--uh, she had a friend that, uh, that married a guy--and
they had a store in Hopkinsville, Kentucky--named Esther Strauss. (??) And she
invited my mother to come up and visit her for the weekend. They were childhood
friends. And when she came, she fixed her up with my father, and that ended up
with them--them getting married, and they--they got married here in Nashville,
at home, and, uh, never took a honeymoon. Just caught the train and went--went
back to Kentucky.
FERNHEIMER: Straight to work at the store. --(laughs)--
GORDON: This is (??)--right back, why, yeah (??), he wasn't going to be out of
the store. So, it was, you know, it was--was very interesting. But I think race
was always a factor, and is always a factor, I think. But basically,
00:14:00our racial--racial relations in the town were pretty simple. It was before the
days of integration. It was probably before the days when people woke up and
started challenging things. And it was just--just accepted, this is what it is.
And I think ev--the--the whites had a lot of respect for certain members of the
Black community. And I think it was the same thing at the--the other way.
FERNHEIMER: So was--did the other stores in town--well, obviously, if there are
two Jew stores in town, and African Americans were shopping at both, uh, how did
the rest of the community think about that, since that was during the times when
things weren't super integrated? That's--
GORDON: --well, I don't think--
FERNHEIMER: --interesting to me.
GORDON: I think it's--you know, when you start--and reflect back--back on that,
that's the way it was. And people didn't--didn't think differently.
They--they--it was before they--people hadn't--before the African
00:15:00American community had the nerve to challenge what the situation was--it wasn't
good. But, you know, we're supposed to have separate but equal educations.
That--that certainly wasn't true. We had--whites had much better schools and had
much better teachers, and everything else. But the people living two doors from
me, they got picked up in the morning, driven twenty miles to another school--
FERNHEIMER: Wow.
GORDON: --in another town, 'cause there wasn't a Black school in town.
FERNHEIMER: Where was the Black school?
GORDON: Black school was in--in Hopkinsville, really. But they had--and, uh,
they had a Black school, and--from first through the eighth. But there was no
high school.
FERNHEIMER: No African American high school, huh.
GORDON: Yeah, (??) my other school--when I say school--my school had from the
eighth--from the ninth grade through the twelfth had fifty-five kids. The year
before me, three graduated. My class was twelve, and the year after me was six.
So, was--there was--during the war, the teachers tried, but they weren't
educated. They--they were--they didn't--any--anybody was moving (??)
00:16:00age went to the military. There was no men teachers, and the women could get a
teaching license after two years.
FERNHEIMER: Um-hm.
GORDON: So you had a lot of wo--a lot of young women had no experience and
really wasn't qualified teachers by most people's standard, but that was--that
was all that was available.
FERNHEIMER: Wow.
GORDON: So, you got whatever education you could, and you got--got a reasonable
education for the people that just did it, (??) and for the effort we probably
put into it.
FERNHEIMER: Hmm. One of the things that was interesting to me was that, at that
time, your mom was working, even after you were born, uh--
GORDON: Well, she had to, yeah. She worked all her life.
FERNHEIMER: And--
GORDON: And it was expected of her.
FERNHEIMER: And the--you mentioned that there was a domestic worker who was
hired to take care of you.
GORDON: Name was Katie.
FERNHEIMER: Was Katie African American?
GORDON: Yeah, oh yes. Definitely so.
FERNHEIMER: And did she live in your house? Or did she come--
GORDON: Uh, she came every morning. She--she walked--uh, she lived
00:17:00'bout--maybe mile-and-a-half, two miles away. She'd walk to work, and used to
work 'til maybe three or four o'clock in the afternoon and go home. Then my
mother would cook dinner herself. But, uh, she did the laundry and she did
cleaning up, and so forth. And she was there for years, the--Katie--like a
member of our family. It was these (??)--yeah, she finally moved out of town,
and she'd come back every year and visit with us, and we, uh--and then--Bernice
(??) and I have had some amazing relationships.
FERNHEIMER: And what's--what was Katie's last name?
GORDON: Uh, Katie--uh, hold on, let's see. Grey.
FERNHEIMER: And--
GORDON: Katie Grey.
FERNHEIMER: --how did your parents come to be connected with her? Was she
recommended? Would--did she work for other--
GORDON: Well, she--she knew--
FERNHEIMER: --Jewish families?
GORDON: --[she'd go?]--she--she knew her mother, and she'd ask her if she had
a--anybody in the family that would like to help out. Didn't make much money.
She probably made dollar-and-a-half a day, or two dollars, or something like
that, no more. It's, uh--that's about all--well, of course, at that
00:18:00time, it was all different, but that's about what she made.
FERNHEIMER: And how long was she with your family, working for them?
GORDON: Uh, I would say she was there for twelve, fourteen years.
FERNHEIMER: Wow. So, from the time you were born, to the time you were almost--
GORDON: To--to--yeah, she--yeah.
FERNHEIMER: --bar mit--after bar mitzvah?
GORDON: Yeah. No question about it. And, uh, that, uh, you know, she--my mother
would give her a few things, give her food and so forth. But--they--became a
very close relationship. And that--uh, it's hard to understand when you relate
it to today's environment or the environment for the '60s. And, you know, it
was--or the big explosion in this country came in the mid '60s. I'll get into it
later. I was involved in--being in the retail business at that time, and a lot
of things happened.
FERNHEIMER: Yeah. So, at that time, though, tell me a little bit about--kind of
what it was like to have Katie around. What were the relations in
00:19:00town? It sounds like, uh--
GORDON: Well, she was an integral part of the family. I mean, everybody loved
Katie, and Katie loved me particularly, you know, and my mother. And she would
do anything she could to see that I was well taken care of. She'd do some
cooking. And, you know, for lunch, she'd make some things and so forth. But she
was, uh--so, to really understand it, uh, you gotta understand that it was a
total different time. They didn't have many choices, as my father coming--didn't
have a lot of choices, either. You know, he was an immigrant. Uh, people would
walk up and down the street and stop at the window and say, "There's a Jew in
there!" And they'd stop and look, like he ought to have horns on him. 'Cause
they didn't--uh, they'd never heard of one. And where he got really
accepted--the mayor of town was electrician. And they had a pole that he--that
that mayor climbed up on and was doing some work, and he got shocked.
00:20:00And he was electrically shocked. He wasn't dead, but he was paralyzed after
that. And there was fifteen, twenty people standing around watching him, say how
horrible it was. And my dad was strong. And he come and climbed up the post, put
him on his shoulder and brought him down. And everybody said, "That Jew's
strong, isn't he? He's"--and all of a sudden, Dad (??) got to be "the strong
Jew." And it never went away for his (??)--but he became more accepted. I mean,
they--they--when I say that, everybody always knew he was a Jew, and
everybody'd--always knew he was different, in their lives, (??) but they kinda
accepted him as a human being some, a little differently than before.
FERNHEIMER: Ah.
GORDON: But, uh, you know, it was a--was a--was--it was all uneducated people,
and they never heard of a Jew. He was--first one that showed up. And
00:21:00most of--many of 'em didn't know how to react to it, or didn't know how to
handle it.
FERNHEIMER: And your family, it sounds like, kept some traditions while they
were in Crofton.
GORDON: Well, they di--they did! Well, they--my mother always kept kosher. I
always said--I didn't know what a piece of meat taste like 'til I went to
college, 'cause she'd beat it to death with a salt lick, the (??)--(laughter)
'til it was raw leather. And so, she'd chop it, and chop it, and so I said
(??)--I didn't know--I didn't know meat taste so good. And it's, uh--we--we had,
uh, Passover, had two sets of dishes. She'd take 'em, and she'd put 'em up in
the attic and store 'em till the next year. And then, she'd drag 'em out. They'd
be wrapped up in paper in big boxes. She'd bring 'em down, we had two set--we
didn't have milk with meat. Uh, we had a shochet (??) that came from--sort of
(??) the Conserv--the Orthodox synagogue here. And he came every two weeks.
FERNHEIMER: From Nashville?
GORDON: And they'd pay him two dollars-and-a-half to come kill chickens. Well,
he'd ride the bus all day to kill chickens for maybe two families in
00:22:00Hopkinsville, and--my dad and his brother. And he might make five, six dollars,
but the bus fare probably cost him three or four. But he wanted to do it. He'd
come, take his knife, slit the chicken's neck, and slit them (??) down. They'd
flop and flop, and they'd flop over dead. And so, my mother and Katie would pick 'em.
FERNHEIMER: Wow.
GORDON: And, uh, you know, she'd come to Nashville every few months and buy some
stuff at the delicatessen here. And particularly when Passover was coming, she'd
come get some--box full of stuff and we'd--we'd have it, and we--when Passover
come, we'd have the service, but it was just the three of us.
FERNHEIMER: Oh, wow.
GORDON: It was just the three of us. And my uncle would have the same thing next
door, but we never had it together.
FERNHEIMER: Really?
GORDON: Uh-uh.
FERNHEIMER: Do you know why?
GORDON: I just think it's--it was--it wasn't social times. I could say--I never
spent the night at anybody's hospit--house, and nobody ever spent the
00:23:00night at my house. I never had dinner at anybody's house, and nobody ever had
dinner at my house. That was just--way things were. Wasn't that what that we
trying not to.
FERNHEIMER: And do you think that had anything to do with being Jews? Or do you
think that had to do with the mentality of the town? Or something else?
GORDON: No, I think it had to do with, uh, the mentality of my father, who was
obsessed with working. Uh, didn't think about anything socially. Uh, you know, I
think it--uh, we getting off on a little path (??), but he was v--he was
religious, but only went to services for Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. The store
was going to be closed on Rosh Hashanah, it was going to be closed for two days
for Yom Kippur. That was the only two days it was going to be closed. And then,
when a mother and father had a Yizkor service, the boys all got together and
went to the synagogue for minyan. They were gonna go, but that was
00:24:00the only time they were gonna go, and--
FERNHEIMER: And the synagogue was in Nashville or Hopkinsville, like--
GORDON: Hopkinsville. The--well, Hopkinsville had the smallest synagogue in the
country. It was a group of guys that were scattered around in Hopkinsville,
Crofton, Nortonville, Greenville, Central City, Russellville, Clarksville--all
got together and built a synagogue in Hopkinsville. Think it had maybe forty
members. And they reported (??) a rabbi every year from Hebrew Union College. It
was a very nice building. It got torn down, 'cause they--most of the Jews moved
out of Hopkinsville. There wasn't anybody to support it. It got torn down maybe
twenty-five, thirty years ago. And, uh, we all went. Everybody knew everybody,
'cause they'd all come--the same part of Europe. And they were maybe
semi-related, but not--there was a guy named Alex Cohen (??) who ran a store in
Greenville, Kentucky, who acted as the rabbi. Anything happened, Alex came and
did the davening. He was very capable.
FERNHEIMER: So, like--I'm thinking back now. I know I'm going back in
00:25:00time now, but when you were born, did they bring you there to do a bris? Did
they--did someone come to the house? Or did--was there a bris?
GORDON: They came to the house. Uh, they--
FERNHEIMER: I'm being--being presumptuous here!
GORDON: There was a guy at the--uh-----------(??) synagogue here who named
Abramson. And he was not the rabbi, he was--the--did the praying and--led the
prayers. He came--he was a friend of my mother's--he came up to do the prayer.
That's the--and the--then, the day--it was supposed to be very deep snow, and
all these people tredged in from the nearby--fifteen, twenty miles away--towns
to be there for the bris.
FERNHEIMER: Wow.
GORDON: And they had the bris--the bris at home. And, you know, it was no big
deal! --(laughs)-- They served a little--somebody brought some corned beef, and
a few things, and everybody had a sandwich and left. So, it was a simple, simple lifestyle.
FERNHEIMER: Yeah. And so, the store was open seven days a week. So, do you--did
you have any sense of Sabbath celebration, or were there meals?
00:26:00
GORDON: No, no.
FERNHEIMER: Okay.
GORDON: We'd have prayer, you know, uh, certainly for the Passover, if it
was--the holidays, uh, maybe we'd have something for birthdays. But, you know,
"Happy birthday," that was about it, and everybody--my dad give me a check for
twenty-five dollars or something. And, uh, the family was very close, but
Judaism was more traditional than it was religious.
FERNHEIMER: What do you mean by that?
GORDON: Well, if I analyze myself, I can't say I'm overly religious, but I'm
bound by tradition. What was good enough for my father and mother are good
enough for me. And I always, uh, felt that way. I felt, uh--didn't have a
Jewish, uh, education. I had very--my kids are far more Jewish than I am, as far
as an education and so forth. Uh, been mu--much more exposed to it. My wife was
more exposed to it. I was exposed --just, uh, one day for Rosh
00:27:00Hashanah and two days for Yom Kippur. Uh, never went to service other than that.
Really never understood it. Really--
FERNHEIMER: Were you--did your dad teach you to read Hebrew--
GORDON: Hmm?
FERNHEIMER: --or to s--you had mentioned that you understood Yiddish. Were you
able to read, or--
GORDON: Well, I--I was--was able to read. I was bar mitzvahed, and where I was
bar mitzvahed--the guy that just--did (??) kill the chickens, the shochet
(??)--for about a year before I was bar mitzvah--he'd come--and that was--he
came once a month. He'd come spend the night at our house and work with me for
an hour or so.
FERNHEIMER: And that was Abramson, or--
GORDON: That--that--that--this was another guy. Abramson did the br--the bris.
But the other guy, what was his name? He was--he was a mohel at the, at the
Orthodox synagogue. But he'd stay the--stay overnight to--to train me. So, my
bar mitzvah was the same group of people's--on a Saturday morning. Uh, had a
little ceremony at the synagogue. Again, had the same type food.
FERNHEIMER: In Hopkinsville?
GORDON: In Hopkinsville, and we had (??)--the same group of people
00:28:00were there. And then, was over, you went back. And I can remember the basketball
coach--I was beginning to play basketball there. Well, the next day at practice,
a guy--"Y'all be careful here. Joel joined the church yesterday and we can't
curse anymore around him!" So, it was--you know it was a--inter-interesting
thing. I'd--I'd have to say--I might not have been too proud during those days
to be Jewish. It was--until I got to be a fairly good basketball player, where I
was accepted by everybody, 'cause I was really the best in town. Before that, it
was not particularly comfortable to be Jewish.
FERNHEIMER: And that was sometime in high school, right? That your--
GORDON: Well, you had stop-----------(??)
FERNHEIMER: I mean, you started early, right?
GORDON: What (??)--
FERNHEIMER: Playing basketball in the--the eighth grade?
GORDON: Started earl--in the eighth grade, on--and, uh, you know, it's--when I
got to be pretty good, everybody could--became greater admirers. Uh, the people
would --women would come home, talk to my mother, and said Joel and
00:29:00so forth are very friendly. You know, "If they decide to get serious, what would
you say?" And my mother would say, "Well, he does whatever he wants to, you
know? Uh, we don't have any influence." When I'd come in, they say, "Don't have
anything else to do with her, they're beginning to ask questions and they're
interested--you." And my parents drill me and drill me with, uh, "We've worked
very hard all our life. We want you to have the best. We're not asking anything
of you, but don't marry a shiksa! If you do, we'll die right here--this floor!
We'll drop dead!" --(laughs)-- They said, "So we can--you can't do that!"
FERNHEIMER: So, they were pretty open to you dating until it got to the point
where the parents were getting interested?
GORDON: That's right. The--the--they would say--they always told me, said, "You
know, when--we're not asking you to--do whatever you want to do with your life.
But if you want to kill us, marry a shiksa!"
FERNHEIMER: Wow.
GORDON: And had--'cause I had an aunt next door who was probably more religious
than we were. She --she enjoyed coming--tell my mother, "I saw Joel
00:30:00walking down the street with this girl. You going to end up with a shiksa for a
daughter-in-law!" --(laughs)-- So, it was combat all--all over the place. It was
real--it was--it was interesting, the social life there was non-existent. The
only place you could go was a pool room--
FERNHEIMER: --um-hm--
GORDON: --or we had a little place called The Eat Shop (??), which is
less--'bout as big as this room. Had a juke box, and people went over there in
the evening, put a nickel in the juke box, and listen, and hope to--walkin' some
of the girls home, or something, from--who were there. But if you had--if you
were out after nine o'clock, you were by yourself, 'cause the lights were out,
nothing was open, and you were home.
FERNHEIMER: So, was your family and your uncle's family the only Jewish families
in Crofton? Or was--
GORDON: Yes. No, that was the only one.
FERNHEIMER: And how far was Crofton from Hopkinsville?
GORDON: Ten miles, twelve miles, so--
FERNHEIMER: So--and how did you get there? Did you drive? Or did you--
GORDON: Well, we didn't have a car. My dad had a car. When I got old
00:31:00enough to drive, he sold it. And we didn't have a car, so he would hire somebody
to drive us. Had a guy, worked on a--he had a farm. The guy worked as a
sharecropper. He was a sharecropper. You know, they don't get paid anything, but
they share in what they raise. If they get good crop, they get some money. And
he'd hire him to drive us to synagogue and pick us up quick as service was over.
And then, the first thing to do was get back and open the store, 'cause the
first customer came in--if he bought something and if it was good, he'd say,
"Man, it's gonna be a great year! First customer come in was very profitable!"
And so, he--you know, he'd opened up, it--if services were over at sundown, we
were home forty-five minutes later, and the store was open 'til nine o'clock.
FERNHEIMER: So that--that was my next question, was: how long was that ten-mile
drive back them? Forty-five minutes?
GORDON: Uh, thirty--thirty minutes. Thirty, forty minutes, yep. Uh, and I used
to hitchhike. You couldn't do that anymore, but I'd go to Hopkinsville, get on
the highway, somebody stop and pick me up. Today, they'd be scared to
00:32:00death to do that.
FERNHEIMER: And did you have cousins from your uncle who were close in age?
GORDON: I had a cousin, he was ten years older than I--and each had one child.
Had a sister, she died at childbirth. Again, it was at home. And she--she--she
didn't come out too well, and--but he had one son, and he was ten years older
than I was. And he kinda looked after me, in a way. But we didn't--we were--so
much age difference, 'til we got older, with--there was no--no, kind of--
FERNHEIMER: Not a lot of interaction.
GORDON: -----------(??) yeah, with that--but, uh, my uncles--and we had an uncle
down in d--Nortonville, which is ten other (??) miles further down the road. It
had a similar-type store. Then, about every three weeks, they'd come up on
Sunday afternoon. We'd sit under the shade tree and drink lemonade. And
that--that was kind of the big--big social event. Uncle Dave and Aunt Bertha
come into town, yeah.
FERNHEIMER: So, interesting. It was Sunday afternoons that that was--that
was--they took the day off, because--they (??)--
00:33:00
GORDON: Well, they didn't take it off. Daddy still had--the store'd open--but my
mother and--would come. They'd come, we'd sit, and then, after a while, he'd
come over and my mother'd go to the store, and he'd come sit.
FERNHEIMER: Wow. So, they did tag team--
GORDON: So--
FERNHEIMER: --in order to--
GORDON: --that's the way--
FERNHEIMER: --both socialize.
GORDON: --we--we grew up. At breakfast, they got up, and--well, he left, and
then my mother got up and fixed breakfast, and he'd come back--and ate. Then, an
hour or so later, I'd get up and she'd fix me breakfast. Then, I'd go to school.
And then, I'd come home for lunch, and Katie'd fix my lunch. Then, at dinner,
she'd go home, cook--my mother'd go home, cook something, say five-thirty. And
my daddy'd come, and he and I'd eat, then he'd go back to the store and I'd sit
there and eat with my mother. Then I'd go back to the store. So, I spent the
nights not at home. In the store.
FERNHEIMER: Mmm.
GORDON: I'd go back to the store, about--be there by five-thirty, six o'clock,
and I can remember listening to the radio at six o'clock every night. And then,
we'd go home at nine.
00:34:00
FERNHEIMER: What was the food like? What did your mom fix? What did Katie fix?
GORDON: Well, my mom liked the--for big meals, she liked tzimmes, and she liked
the carrot soup, and she liked beets and those type things. That's, uh--well,
for bigger meals. And other than that, we had rice, you know, for--cereal--like
a cereal-type thing and so forth. So, it was--that ain't big eating, I mean, it
was healthy eating, but it was not anything fancy.
FERNHEIMER: Where did they get the kosher beef from? He--did the--
GORDON: --uh--
FERNHEIMER: --same guy who did the chickens do cows also?
GORDON: No, they'd get it from Nashville. They'd--
FERNHEIMER: Oh.
GORDON: --order it, and they did--just--he'd bring it up, or they'd ship it up.
But it's--I don't wanna get you off the--I think I've gotten off--you off the--
FERNHEIMER: No, no.
GORDON: --the--
FERNHEIMER: This was part of the questions that we really wanted to--
GORDON: It was, uh, you know--and I guess why I said my--well, the--with the
(??) ZBT [Zeta Beta Tau] members of Kentucky, the ones that were from Kentucky,
everybody's family had a store. They were all merchants. That's not
00:35:00true anymore, 'cause all the kids left--left those towns. That's (??)--it wasn't
big enough for 'em, I guess, or something, but--and they weren't willing--and,
you know, then--and those small-town merchants dried up. Walmart come in, took
'em all over. So, it was a--was a different group of people, but everybody had
the big thing. It was always a kid in the--kid in a--Don Pressman always--my
daddy just called him Ben. Said, "The Big Ben's coming to town, you better shape
up!" And we kid--well, his (??) father's name was Joe. And I say, you know, it's
just (??)--"Don always liked to drive a convertible!"
FERNHEIMER: Don?
GORDON: Pressman.
FERNHEIMER: Oh, okay.
GORDON: I said, "Joe's going to come to town, and, you know, he--he gonna take
that convertible! He gonna take it once I get home! You're not making good
enough grades to suit it (??)" So it was--it was a whole thing--I always knew I
was Jewish. Always was committed--I've dated a lot of young ladies where we
sit--and had calls, talks, and said, "This is not gonna work. I just can't do it."
FERNHEIMER: So, it sounds like that was one of the most important
00:36:00values you got from your parents. Were there other--or, I guess, tell me--
GORDON: Oh, that--that was an important value, but the other im--
FERNHEIMER: Tell me about some of the other things that your--
GORDON: Well, the--
FERNHEIMER: --parents tried to impart on you--
GORDON: Well, I think that what I got from my parents more than everything--you
just gotta work for a living. Nobody's gonna give you anything. And you better
prepare and be able to work, and--and hope to accomplish something. And you
can't spend everything you make. If you spend everything you make, you're gonna
end up an old person with nothing. So, you'd better kinda, make some plans and
save, and it's better to pass up something now and not have to worry about it later.
FERNHEIMER: What, if any, Jewish values do you think they--they tried to share
with you? You talk about the rabbi coming in to--to help you train for the bar
mitzvah. Were there other things? You said your father prayed. Did they teach
you, or--
GORDON: Well, my dad--yeah, well, we --around the store, they spoke a
00:37:00lot of Yiddish.
FERNHEIMER: Hmm.
GORDON: And it was mostly used for benefit of the customers not knowing what he
was saying. Uh, be three or four people coming around who he was suspect of,
he'd look at me, and says, "Hab aoygn," which meant, "Have eyes." He would want
me to watch 'em, and see if they weren't picking up something. And, uh, you
know, he--he was a very smart, self-educated person. Had no literal education
from--from a school. Think he--he came to this country when he was about
fourteen and only had gone to cheder. He might have gone equivalent to--
AUTOMATED VOICE: -----------(??)
FERNHEIMER: Sorry. I'm trying to do a backup here and it's talking back to me.
Sorry, keep going.
GORDON: Might have had equivalent of a fourth-grade education, but he had a lot
of common sense and had the most beautiful handwriting I've ever seen.
--(laughter)-- He had beautiful, beautiful handwriting. I've never
00:38:00been able to write like he w--did. But it's--uh, he was self-made and smart
enough to, I guess, achieve what he wanted to achieve. And, uh, achieve--like,
he'd say to me, "I want you to be a doctor." I'd say, "Well, Daddy, I don't want
to be a doctor." He'd say, "Well, that's fine. Just go to school, be a doctor,
then do what you want to." It was a--(laughter) that was a--you know, the
European Jewish experience: if you had a son, was a doctor, you'd been very
successful. You know, that was--that was a measure of success. Like, the, uh,
the joke goes that, uh, it was the first Jewish president. And the president's
mother was sitting there and somebody said, "Aren't you proud of your son?"
Said, "Yeah, but let me tell you about my son, the doctor!" --(laughter)-- So,
that's--I think that was kind of a thing, but I--I wasn't interested in being a
doctor, and probably wasn't smart enough to be a doctor anyway. But
00:39:00my background in school, high school, was deficient. I went to school, the--the
first four or five--four grades in a one-room church building, 'cause the school
had burned down. And that was interesting. Then, after that, I went, uh, back
up, but there never was enough people in the class to have any broad-based
thing. I'd--like, I wanted to go to Vanderbilt. Well, the first thing they asked
me, said, "What kindergarten'd you go to?" I had no foreign language. I had one
year of algebra, no geometry or anything else, but I had some good courses. I
had future farming and I had typing. They didn't think much of those--those
courses! And so, I--I was--that was a big part of it, that (??)--Kentucky.
Worked out very well for me. I could have gone to any school in the country,
would not have worked out as well as Kentucky did for me. Kentucky's been a very
important part of my business life and my adult life, really. I
00:40:00got--couldn't--I can't criticize it at all. Now, only thing to criticize, I
wasn't as good an athlete as I thought I want--ought to be, but that was
very--very simply, I wasn't as good as some of the other people, you know?
FERNHEIMER: Yeah, let's--can--can we talk a little bit about your--
GORDON: Yeah.
FERNHEIMER: --uh, life as a basketball star, both in Crofton and then also at UK
[University of Kentucky]?
GORDON: Well, Crofton, I was--you know, I got to where you're kinda--not
idolized, but you're respected, 'cause--and my daddy didn't like that at all.
He--we--I practiced basketball, and every night I'd come home, he'd say, "If you
were in here working, you'd be a lot better off. I could use you, and you could
do something. You're out there spieling (??) around," what he--he'd say. "And
you're speiling around, that don't mean anything." Then finally, I got to be
pretty good and I got the write-ups in the paper. I'd come home and he wouldn't
want me to see it, but he'd have the paper out where I had write-ups, and he
would--showing people, "This is my son!" --(laughter)-- And so, he
--he got a--a lot of kick out of that from that, that point. But
00:41:00basically, once I became--recognized basketball player, the people in town were
fully supportive. The, uh--you know, they give you the: "He's a wonder, he's a
dream, he's the captain of our team" type stuff, and--but before that, it was--I
was Jewish, and that was different.
FERNHEIMER: What--what kinds of experiences of being different did you have
before your basketball--
GORDON: I--
FERNHEIMER: --fame?
GORDON: --can remember being eight or nine years, playing out in the yard, and
this one group of people I still recall very vividly would walk up and down the
street and stop at the fence--had a fence around our yard--saying, "Jew baby!
Jew baby! How you sell your socks? Forty-nine cents! Ninety-eight cents a box!"
--(laughs)-- And they--they'd sit there and sing it, you know? "There's a Jew
baby!" That's what they'd call you. And that's--you know, that was kind of a
common--common name. Uh, they'd--they'd say things about my father,
00:42:00you know, when they'd come in the store, you know? They'd--Jew--everything was,
uh, "Well, can we Jew you down?" That was--common phrase. I don't--I don't think
it meant anything much, but that--that was just something that they--they
thought to get something cheaper, and they say, is: "Jewing you down." And
it's--uh, you know, it's, uh, if--got over that, o--over time, but you
still--it's--scars you get from that. Well-----------(??) when I went to the
university, I was different. When I say that--that I had--I have always had the
type of personality, I get along with most people. And I've always had a lot of
non-Jewish friends. I did at the university. But it's still--there were certain
girls who really didn't want to go out with me. Some did. A lot did, but certain
didn't because going out with a Jewish guy wasn't very ex--well,
00:43:00well, not that it wasn't very exciting, but it wasn't something that they wanted
to--wanted to do, because they'd been cautioned against it so much.
FERNHEIMER: So, that sounds like a kind of contrast from the experiences being a
kind of well-renowned basketball player in Crofton and being able to--
GORDON: Well--
FERNHEIMER: --it sounds like--date who you liked, uh--
GORDON: Well, it's--you know, it isn't like--I was told by the (??) fraternity,
you know, it--I want--I thought--people try to get me to pledge Sigma Chi. Well,
I didn't know the difference, and--I didn't know anything about fraternities.
When I went to school, everybody said, "We want you--to be in my fraternity when
I"--people that knew me, when I get there (??), I'll have my fraternity rush.
Uh, well, that was before they changed the rules. In that time, all initiations
were very religious-oriented. And the Jewish one was--was ZBT. When you--why,
when you knock on the door and they say, "Who--who is it seeks
admissions--within these doors?" "I'm Joel Gordon, I am a Jew." And you'd
declare that. Well, that's out the window, too, now. So, all those things were
there, and it made it a little more difficult, uh, to adjust. You
00:44:00knew there were certain things you couldn't do. There were certain groups you
couldn't belong--and, you know, I--I got invited to a lot of other fraternities'
formals, where you get a date and they'd say, "We want you to be our guest." But
I always knew I wasn't a member. And that's not bad, I guess,
with--that--that--it drove me to want to do something different. It made--drove
me to, say I want to develop a career where I could develop respect and walk in
a room with my head as high as anybody else's was in that room. And, uh, I think
that Kentucky helped me do that.
FERNHEIMER: Yeah, um-----------(??)
GORDON: I've--I've got you off here. I don't wanna--I don't wanna get you off the--
FERNHEIMER: Don't worry about it.
GORDON: --the whole--the--
FERNHEIMER: I'll--I'll get you back, or--
GORDON: Okay.
FERNHEIMER: --I'll--I'll ask what--well, I'll try and ask what I want.
GORDON: The--the--
FERNHEIMER: Um, tell me a little bit more about, you know, what it
00:45:00was like at--you talk about your father's kind of hidden pride for your--your
basketball prowess once you started to get some recognition in the town. How, if
at all, did that change once you started getting recruited for college? Was
that--was college something that your parents wanted for you? Was that something
that you wanted for yourself?
GORDON: My mother probably wanted that. My dad was glad I could do it. Probably
never really understood enough to--you know, college wasn't--nobody in his
family had ever gone. I was the first person in his family that had ever gone to
school. So, my cousin who was ten years older did not go, he stayed and worked.
So, nobody in the--
FERNHEIMER: In the store?
GORDON: --nobody in the family ever considered--and I think the biggest, uh,
thing was that I had an uncle, who was married to my mother's sister, that had
gone to school in Cleveland at, uh, Western Reserve University and was an
all-American football player right after World War I. And always got
00:46:00a lot of recognition and so forth, and always kept talking to me about, "I need
to go to college." And he kept making contacts with different colleges to get in
touch with me. He was pushing it. And he--he kind of wanted me to go to
Vanderbilt, but, uh, you know, was--was--wanted me to go to Vanderbilt or
Alabama or Northwestern. Well, maybe I could--I couldn't get Vanderbilt, I don't
think. And I probably couldn't got in Northwestern. But as it worked out, it
worked out very well.
FERNHEIMER: How--when did you interact with your uncle? It sounds like there
weren't a lot of family events. When did you encounter him, uh--
GORDON: When did I do what?
FERNHEIMER: This uncle who was encouraging you to go--and you said uncle, right?
GORDON: Yeah.
FERNHEIMER: Uh, to go to college. When did you see him? Were there--
GORDON: Uh, I saw him maybe once a year. My mother would come to Nashville and
we'd catch a train and come--but when--'til I went to Kentucky, I'd never been
over eighty miles away from home. And that was to a state basketball
00:47:00tournament. So, I'd never been anywhere--was on a Greyhound bus. But we--she'd
come to Nashville about once a year to visit her sister.
FERNHEIMER: Um-hm.
GORDON: And he was there, and he was always into sports, and really
kinda--and--and wrote me letters about what I ought to be doing, and about,
"Don't--don't give up, go to school" and so forth, and so on. So, he was--he
was--in that area, was very influential. My daddy didn't know--he would've liked
to help, that--or done anything he could, but he didn't--that was not his world.
He did not--didn't know anything about that. And nev--that--
FERNHEIMER: What was this uncle's name? I'm--
GORDON: Saul Weinberger. (??)
FERNHEIMER: Saul Weinberger.
GORDON: And so--and uh, there--there's a family that was very influential on me,
too. I'll get into--later, about Bernice. They were very involved with that.
FERNHEIMER: Yeah. So how did it come to be that you were getting recruited to
the University of Kentucky by, uh, Coach Rupp?
GORDON: Well, some people at--so, Kentucky alumni in the area would
00:48:00send him write-ups about me and tell him they thought that I--I could play and
that, uh, he oughta take a look at me. And he did, and then he--he--
FERNHEIMER: So, he came out to Crofton to watch you play?
GORDON: Well, no, he invited me to Lexington.
FERNHEIMER: Okay.
GORDON: So, I caught the Greyhound bus and went to Lexington, spent the day,
worked out. And he was telling me that, uh, you know, he needs some new players,
that he was in Madison Square Garden and won, and, uh, that they were going to
play in the Olympics in 1948--this was in 1946--and I could go to London with
'em, or they're gonna play in Madison Square Garden, and maybe they were
invited--going to be invited to the Philippines to put on a clinic. That would
be very exciting, and he'd like for me to come up and try out, and try to make
the team. Well, I thought about that, and then I looked at a couple other
schools, Alabama and Murray. And I decided Kentucky was much more
00:49:00exciting. So, I decided to go there, and then, uh, as it turned out, I really
never played any basketball. I dressed a lot, and if I got in the game, it was
ninety-eight to forty-something. He'd say, "Get in there and get yourself a
couple buckets!" But after--after about two years of that, I thought I'd had
enough, and he, uh, he kept saying, you know, "Well, next year, you'll be
better." And I kept saying, "I better concentrate on my studies and forget
basketball." But I did get a scholarship, and it was--made a lot of good
friends. There's Bob Freyman (??). Now he--he--he never made it. He went out and
he was on the team for a while, but they cut him and he became a track guy. He
won a track letter. Ran the four-forty. And we became close friends. He was--we
were the same size, swap clothes, and so forth, and it--
FERNHEIMER: Another six-foot-five Jew?
GORDON: -----------(??) And they had another guy. They had--Rupp's basketball
had always had Jews. And where they had it--basketball was a Jewish
00:50:00street game. And in early days, basketball was in New York, up East. And a guy
named Bernie Opper, who was an All-American in New York--the Jews were very good
basketball player--Bernie played at, uh, Kentucky in the mid-'30s. And every
year, he had somebody from New York. Later, he had a guy named Cowboy Cohen.
FERNHEIMER: Cowboy Coin?
GORDON: Yeah, Cohen. They came--they--he--he played the--
FERNHEIMER: Oh, Cohen.
GORDON: --junior college in Texas and they named him "Cowboy." So, it was Cowboy
Cohen. Then he had a guy named George Feigenbaum. So, he had--he had some Jews,
and they all come out--mostly out of New York.
FERNHEIMER: And this is, like, in the nineteen--so, this is when school--when UK
GORDON: The--
FERNHEIMER: --was segregated, so--so--
GORDON: Well, this was the for--this was in the '40s, primarily '40s and '50s.
FERNHEIMER: And so--that's--that's really interesting to me.
GORDON: UK was segregated--long, long time. The first African American was a
football player named Greg Page, who died. He got hurt on the
00:51:00football field. But Rupp was very nice to me. He'd have me over the house maybe
once a month on Sunday night, for--he'd pick up a group of us and have--he was
very Germanic. He was--family was from Germany and he was very focused. At
practice, somebody'd whistle, like, (??) blow the whistle, and he'd say, "Who's
whistling?" Guy said, "Here." Said, "Let me tell you something. The music
department's across the street, and they don't give scholarships. --(laughs)--
So if you want--wanna whistle, go over there!" And he, uh, was--he was very much
against integration. Didn't wanna play against a Black team. Very good friend of
mine was a guy named Ned Breathitt. Ned Breathitt was the governor of Kentucky
in the late '50s, early '60s. And he told me, says, "I wanna integrate the
basketball team. And I'm gonna do it." Says, "I've told Adolph I wanna go
recruit with him." Well, the outstanding basketb--high school basketball player
in the country then was a guy in Louisville named Wes Unseld, who was
00:52:00legendary in the pros.
FERNHEIMER: How do you spell Unseld?
GORDON: U-N-S-E-L-D.
FERNHEIMER: Thank you.
GORDON: Wes Unseld. And he went to Louisville--well (??)--but, uh, they--they
had called me in, says, "We didn't make it." I said, "What happened?" Said, "We
were dead when we walked in the room." I said, "Really?" He said, "Yes. Adolph
went in, he says, 'Hey, boy! I want you to come up to Lexington!'" Said, "When
he said, 'Hey, boy,' it was all over." But that just--that killed it off and we
had nothing we could do to recover.
FERNHEIMER: What year was that?
GORDON: This was probably in, uh, early '60s. But they'd--they hadn't
integrated--the first--first Black player Kentucky had was a guy named Thomas
Payne, was a seven-footer out of Louisville.
FERNHEIMER: Wow.
GORDON: And he came there and did very well, except later, he got--went to
penitentiary for rape. What he--he did was pretty good (??), but he got in the
pros, and got--got--got indicted, and was--WENT to serve several years in the
penitentiary. But he was very late to recruit Blacks.
00:53:00
FERNHEIMER: What year was that, when Payne came, and that's--
GORDON: I can't--I can't tell you it exactly. It was probably--
FERNHEIMER: Oh.
GORDON: --around the early '60s.
FERNHEIMER: I'll look it up. And that was--
GORDON: But he--
FERNHEIMER: --for the bas--was basketball later to integrate than football? Or
did it all integrate at the same time?
GORDON: Well, all about the same time. And then you know what happened?
Lexington was not very accepting either. The Blacks--teams came in, there were
Black players, they wouldn't let 'em play. At the old coliseum, at
the--on--on--on--was the--before they moved to--to Rupp, they wouldn't have left
(??)--like New York had--LIU [Long Island University] had a great basketball
team. They had three--three Jews and two Blacks, and they wouldn't--they
wouldn't schedule with (??) Lexington. They wouldn't--they didn't wanna play the
Blacks. Couldn't--they wouldn't let 'em stay at a hotel in Lexington.
FERNHEIMER: Wow.
GORDON: You know, it's--you know, those--now it's awful hard to see how that all
happened. But that was just a way of life. I mean, you know, the pros
00:54:00didn't have Black athletes, the pros were all white players. Um,
you--you--today, you don't understand how that all went down, but it did. I
can--so, tell you the stories of me being Jewish, or Blacks around, and it's,
uh--uh, but still, I got--don't wanna get you off your--
FERNHEIMER: No, no, no, I'm very interested.
GORDON: Uh, you know, when--when I first came to town--
FERNHEIMER: When did you start at UK?
GORDON: I started UK in 1946.
FERNHEIMER: And you graduated in '51?
GORDON: Fifty-one. I--I dropped out of school for a quarter, 'cause my mother
had cancer. And I went home, stayed with my dad for about three months.
FERNHEIMER: When was that? When--
GORDON: That was in--uh, that would have been '48.
FERNHEIMER: Okay.
GORDON: And then I--that's when I came back, and I never really got involved in
basketball so much after that. But I had great friends at--at the--the--when I
said I had great friends at the--the fraternity, had great friend--there were
several people I was --I was extremely close to. Several people, I
00:55:00didn't have much to do with, 'cause they weren't interested in the type of
things I was interested in.
FERNHEIMER: Huh.
GORDON: I was--I was kinda interested in being involved in a lot of
organizations with a lot of different kind of people. Uh, I was probably
fortunate I got accepted in most of the gentile social situations--
FERNHEIMER: Um-hm.
GORDON: --and most--Bob Freyman, (??) and three or four, five of us--was Don
Pressman, and I did that. Some of the people resented that.
FERNHEIMER: How did you think--
GORDON: They--
FERNHEIMER: --that came about?
GORDON: My small-town background.
FERNHEIMER: Mm.
GORDON: You know, when I first came to town, I worked for--department store
named Harvey's, which was a very aggressive store. Went to work there for
fifty-five dollars a week, and--
FERNHEIMER: In Lexington, or in Nashville?
GORDON: No, Nashville.
FERNHEIMER: Okay, I was--
GORDON: And, now, the--Saul Weinberger's--I was told (??)--and I--I came to live
with them. And then my aunt and the--uncle both were very active in
00:56:00the temple. They did a lot of cooking for various affairs at the temple. And I
came to town one afternoon, I went by to visit them. They were working, and my
cousin was there, who was a friend of my wife, Bernice. And she said, "You got
anything to do tonight?" And I said, "No, I don't." She said, "Would you like to
have a date?" And I said, "Yeah." She said, "I'm gonna fix you up with a cousin
of--with a friend of mine."
FERNHEIMER: So this was after UK, right?
GORDON: After UK.
FERNHEIMER: Okay. I'm gonna come back to UK in a minute, but--
GORDON: Okay.
FERNHEIMER: --tell me the story about Berni--
GORDON: So, we, uh, went--she said she'd fix me up. And then, I had another
friend. I was-----------(??) said, "What are you doing?" "I'm actually (??)
going out with Bernice Weingard (??) tonight." "Bet you won't like her. She's
too young, too quiet for you." But it turned out, the girl I married--and
fifty-two years later, here I am! But basically, I worked there and it was very,
very interesting. And then, after about three years, I got recruited by a
company called Cain-Sloan company, which was the biggest department store in
town. It was right across the street.
FERNHEIMER: Hang on one second. Can I pause you right here?
GORDON: Yeah, sure.
FERNHEIMER: Can we rewind back to UK?
GORDON: Yeah, sure.
00:57:00
FERNHEIMER: You were telling me about, kind of, the interesting--the--the--there
was a small group in the fraternity, I gather--
GORDON: Yeah.
FERNHEIMER: --that you were very close with that included, it sounds like, Bob
Freyman (??) and Don Pressmo?
GORDON: Press--P-R-E-S-S-M-A-N.
FERNHEIMER: Pressman.
GORDON: Yeah.
FERNHEIMER: Who--who else was part of that group, and what drew you all together?
GORDON: It was Sonny Gergley, who was from Harlan. G-E-R-G-L-E-Y. Arthur
Weinburg, (??) who was from Lexington. It tended to be--this sounds horrible--it
tended to be--Bob Freyman, who was from Brooklyn, and the small-town boys who
had--fathers were merchants in Kentucky, versi--not versus, we didn't have
anything against them. But it was--group of people from the East that
didn't--didn't have the social skill to fit in with what you'd find at Kentucky.
FERNHEIMER: Yankees? --(laughs)--
00:58:00
GORDON: Yeah, well, I don't know if most of--was Yankees, but they were--they
were less--less interested in the social things. And we kinda went our way when
they had some of the parties at the fraternity. We were all together. They were
all together. We were friendly, but we didn't have a close relationship. And,
uh, the--ZBT had a lot of parties, but our parties didn't compare with what the
other fraternities had, 'cause we were small in number, and it wasn't--the
Jewish girls, you had to import 'em. You had to bring somebody--a date from
Louisville, or from Cincinnati, somewheres up to New York they knew, where--it
was a lot of--awful lot of good-looking girls at University of Kentucky that
most of our fraternity didn't have relations with.
FERNHEIMER: So, tell me about those parties. Were they mostly opportunities to
meet other young women, or to--
GORDON: No, they were--were the--they were--
FERNHEIMER: Was there dancing?
GORDON: --they were da--dating. It was dinner and dancing, generally. Or
some kind of party at the fraternity house where they had music or,
00:59:00you know, something to eat, something to drink and so forth. It's a--a
social-type experience. But I got--usually got invited to every Sigma Nu--I had
an awful lot of friends over there. So, I always got invited to Sigma Nu dances.
"Get a date, be my--be our guest," or "We're having something at the house, why
don't you come over?"
FERNHEIMER: And how hard was it for you to get a non-Jewish date to join you at
some of these events, some--
GORDON: Not difficult. Got to make a call. You know, it's a--so, it got to be
somebody you know or met. But it, uh--you know, I got--I guess I got turned down
a lot of times, but by and large, uh, I didn't get turned down.
FERNHEIMER: And what was--the rest of social--like, I'm trying to imagine back
what--what student life was like at UK then.
GORDON: Well, you know, I--I was very involved with the Inter-Fraternity
Council. I was ZBT's representative on the Fraternity Council, and we had a lot
of things. But basically, you hung ar--hung out around the student
01:00:00union. Now, that--it's, uh--the big thing was between classes. The social group
was having Cokes or a grilled cheese sandwich, something in the student union.
So, it was very important you got there, got--be able to sit at a table with the
people you wanted to sit with. And that's where you met most of the social
contacts. And, uh, some people wanted you to sit with them, some people didn't.
Uh, it was still--in--in certain parts of the school--wasn't overtly
anti-Semitic, I can't say that, but, uh, Jews weren't particularly welcome to
join the organizations. That was just the way of the world. And no--nobody said
anything, but that just was kinda--kinda--yet, the--but I--I don't think I ever
found--found a--awful lot of outright anti-Semitism in Kentucky, except for
being excluded from the fraternities--initially.
FERNHEIMER: Um-hm. And --but it sounds like Interfraternity Council
01:01:00opened up some doors, in that regard, to you.
GORDON: I think it did. I think--if I go back through my history, University of
Kentucky opened up an awful lot of doors for me.
FERNHEIMER: Yeah.
GORDON: And have--have to say, I coulda gone to any other school, and things
would have been different in my life. First thing, I wouldn't have married the
girl I married, because I would have been around a lot of--more Jewish people,
and I would have perhaps had a relationship and got married earlier. I didn't
get married till I was twenty-six. And whoever that was couldn't have worked out
as well as my wife's worked out here. Uh, family, been--uh, just been the joy of
my life, and Bernice has been extremely supportive of me. No, she's--she's been
much more anxious for me to be successful than she is herself.
FERNHEIMER: Wha--um, I want to talk more about Bernice in just a second.
01:02:00
GORDON: Okay.
FERNHEIMER: Hang out with me at the UK--at UK for just a few
GORDON: Yeah.
FERNHEIMER: --minutes more, if you will--
GORDON: --I like it, I--
FERNHEIMER: --indulge me.
GORDON: Okay, I like it.
FERNHEIMER: Um, it sounds like basketball and Interfraternity Council were
really kinda instrumental in opening up some of those doors
GORDON: I think--
FERNHEIMER: --outside of the Jewish world--
GORDON: I think basketball has opened up more doors for me than anything else in
my life.
FERNHEIMER: Wow.
GORDON: I--I'd have--
FERNHEIMER: --that's an important statement.
GORDON: --I'd have--I'd have to say that. And I--I--why I say that is--although
I wasn't very good at it, basketball at Kentucky has a mystique.
FERNHEIMER: Um-hm.
GORDON: And if I were working with Wall Street bankers or whatever I've done
businesswise, when anything ever comes up about maybe you played basketball at
Kentucky, everybody's very anxious to tell me something about it. You know,
"What--what'd you do? Who was there? Uh, how successful were you?" You know, and
I've--I've told people, "I really didn't play much," they looked at
01:03:00me, says, "If I was as old as you were, I'd say I was an all-American, 'cause
nobody knows the difference!" --(laughter)-- And so--but it would be--it has--it
has opened an awful lot of doors for me, and I--and I really--w--well aware of that.
FERNHEIMER: What--did you meet Bob originally through the fraternity, or through basketball?
GORDON: Well, Bob--uh, through basketball, but then we joined a fraternity at
the same time.
FERNHEIMER: So was he one of your pledge brothers?
GORDON: Yes, yes.
FERNHEIMER: Who--do you remember who else was part of your pledge class?
GORDON: Now, there's Don Pressman, Arthur Weinburg, Sonny Gergley. (??) Sonny
and I were very friendly. Now, his--his father had a store in Harlan.
FERNHEIMER: What did they sell?
GORDON: Hmm?
FERNHEIMER: Do you remember what they sell? What they sold? Gergleys?
GORDON: No, they had, uh, uh--a department store.
FERNHEIMER: Department store.
GORDON: They were--he always used to tell me, "Don't"--he was a
little--short--shorty guy. Said, "Don't--don't--don't--don't think I'm not--I'm
a real hunky lover!" --(laughter)- Said, "I'm a hunky lover," he always say.
He's Hungarian. He's, "I'm a hunky lover!" But he--now, he--he dated
01:04:00a--a very pretty girl, who he met, and that was from high school days--that
spent a lot of time with him at the university.
FERNHEIMER: Jewish or not Jewish?
GORDON: Not Jewish, no.
FERNHEIMER: Not Jewish.
GORDON: He ended up marrying her, then he married--I was sort of waiting with
him at the Central Synagogue in New York. I was there one weekend, he asked me
to come stand up with him. He got married in Central Synagogue on--where's it,
on Fifth Avenue? Where is the--and--but he had a--he had a very rocky--rocky
relationship with women. They didn't--didn't last long.
FERNHEIMER: Um-hm.
GORDON: But he was a big friend of Cawood Ledford, who was a legendary
basketball broad--broadcaster in Kentucky. He--he broadcast all the football and
basketball games for about 35 years--
FERNHEIMER: --huh--
GORDON: --and they were both from Harlan, so they were good friends.
FERNHEIMER: And Jimmy Whitaker (??) was in the fraternity at the time?
GORDON: Who?
FERNHEIMER: Jimmy Whitaker was in the picture-----------(??)
GORDON: Jimmy came back--came--came after--I guess he came--
FERNHEIMER: He was younger than you.
GORDON: --when I was a junior.
FERNHEIMER: Okay. And his parents had a store?
01:05:00
GORDON: They had shoe stores.
FERNHEIMER: Shoe--
GORDON: Had two--a couple--three shoes stores around Lexington.
FERNHEIMER: And did you know a--a Sam Halperin (??) who was at UK at that time?
GORDON: Sam Halperin?
FERNHEIMER: He was a Jewish student sharecropper. Came from a sharecropping
family. A Jewish family who sharecropped tobacco in what is now the tobacco
pla--uh, Toyota plant, not far--
GORDON: Georgetown?
FERNHEIMER: --from Lexington, uh--
GORDON: Sam who, now?
FERNHEIMER: Halperin.
GORDON: Halperin? No, I don't believe I did.
FERNHEIMER: Umm--and--
GORDON: I thought I knew most of--the Jewish--
FERNHEIMER: He wasn't in the fraternity, that's why I asked. I was--
GORDON: Was a guy named Kramer (??) from New York. There was also very round,
sort of (??) big guy, always well-liked around the--the campus. He was--yeah,
there--there wasn't a--wasn't many Jewish girls at all. You know, I'd go to
Hillel--somebody co--coerced me to go, and I'd say, "Well, you know, ain't
nobody here I want to meet." -----------(??) I--I didn't go back much.
FERNHEIMER: How often --so you did go to Hillel?
01:06:00
GORDON: Did go to Hillel. We'd go out there to have a Sunday night dinner. And
once in a while I think, well, we'd see what's there and--it--wasn't any Jewish
girls you could meet. It was-----------(??)
FERNHEIMER: So, it was mostly the guys from ZBT who went, or--who else was there?
GORDON: No, this was mostly the ZBT people that I was with. Maybe two or
four--three or four other guys, but basically--you know, I'd sit back
and--thinking. Jewish wives, girls, I bet I didn't know ten. I don't believe
there was any more--was a girl named Goldstein, was from Owensboro, uh, couple
girls from Louisville. One from, uh, Lexington, what was her name? Uh, family
had a store. And then a--a girl--girl that really had a lot, that was--store
called Wolf Wiles (??)--
FERNHEIMER: --um-hm--
GORDON: --and her name was Strauss. And they had a big house out on Richmond
Road. And it was always a--a big treat to get invited to their house for a
party, 'cause they had a lot of parties.
01:07:00
FERNHEIMER: And why was it such a big treat?
GORDON: 'Cause it was a bigger house than you'd ever--knew about. And it was
big--they were big-time people in Lexington. It was a guy named Ades (??)--was
involved in that, and he was a big friend of Adolph Rupp's. He was--big
supporter of Rupp. In fact, the Jews in Lexington were big supporters of
basketball. And--and, uh, she--well, she married a guy named--friend of mine
named Stanley--forget what his name is. Stanley. He ran Wolf Wiles for a while.
That was a pretty store, right downtown.
FERNHEIMER: Yeah.
GORDON: On Main Street, the stores were all Jewish. I think two theaters and a
couple of hotels, the rest of 'em were Jewish stores.
FERNHEIMER: Yeah. Do you remember any of the stores that were downtown?
GORDON: Was Lowen--Lowenthal's (??) was the first store. Ben Statter's (??) was
a department store. Uh Winnaker's (??), uh, Wolf, uh, Wolf's. (??) Adee--Coff
and Ades' (??). Uh, couple of men's stores. It was all up and down
01:08:00the street. And then, the Rosenbergs (??) were down by the railroad track,
and--which is right on Limestone, where--at the railroad. That's been changed a
little, too.
FERNHEIMER: Yeah.
GORDON: But it was, uh, you know, good group of people.
FERNHEIMER: Did you go out to the local--did you go to services at--while you
were in university? Did you--
GORDON: I went to services. I used to walk to a Conservative synagogue on
Maxwell Street for the service. I could go between classes. Did--I went to
classes, but I--I could walk from--from the student union to Maxwell Street,
just about three or four blocks. And I'd go there for services, stay for a
couple of hours, and leave.
FERNHEIMER: And was the--what--how was your reception there? What was--
GORDON: Everybody was always, like, glad to have a college student take part in
the Jewish services. I mean, I think that's kind of traditional wherever you go.
They were very welcoming.
FERNHEIMER: And how many of the brothers would go with you, or--
GORDON: I think I usually went by myself. Some of' 'em went--the
01:09:00night--at nighttime, but in the day time, they went to classes. Unless they were
very observant, they went to classes in the daytime. And it's, you know--I guess
a difference--what was there--they--in the fraternity and the people I knew,
Jewish-wise, everybody had a lot of things in common. They were all
first-generation American, mostly, uh--families were all, fathers or
grandfathers were all immigrants. They were all in retail business, and that's
kinda all they knew. And that's kinda--was the ambition, to go back and run your
daddy's store. And I get into where I got out of that, I didn't do that--later.
FERNHEIMER: Yeah. So, it--one more question around this area. I'm curious where
that ambition came from. But before we get to that: you mentioned that you
were friends with Norman Kline (??), who was a UK bas--football player--
01:10:00
GORDON: Football player, right.
FERNHEIMER: --at the time. Uh, where was he from? How did you meet him?
GORDON: Louisville. He was from Lou--Louisville. Norman was a great running
back. He'd been there prior to World War II, and came back in 1946.
FERNHEIMER: So, right when you started.
GORDON: Married a girl named Rita Greenspan, (??) who was also at Kentucky.
FERNHEIMER: Jewish? Not Jewish?
GORDON: Yeah, Jewish. And his family was friends with my family, 'cause his--his
grandfather and his uncle had a store in Russellville, Kentucky. And they went
to--same synagogue that we did, but Louis--Norman had played football--high
school at Male at Louisville, and his father and mother were in Louisville. So,
he--he was a very smart guy. Got killed in a plane crash, uh, after college.
FERNHEIMER: Oh, I'm sorry to--
GORDON: In Charleston, West Virginia, or something.
FERNHEIMER: Was he also part of ZBT?
GORDON: Yeah, he was ZBT. He was very smart. And he was academically--very, very
bright guy. Probably the smartest guy in our fraternity.
FERNHEIMER: What did he major in?
01:11:00
GORDON: Engineering. Worked for Dupont. And--
FERNHEIMER: Oh, okay.
GORDON: --was--landed in, uh, Charleston, West Virginia one Saturday morning in
a plane crash. So, you know, it's--it was--you know, the people that I guess I
was friendly with, why, they were people from similar backgrounds. They were
people who were all small-town, with the exception of Bob Freyman (??) and
Malcolm Hermount (??) from Louisville--rest of 'em were people--small town,
immigrant son that ran department stores or run--not department stores, just ran
stores. And it was--it was very in--very interesting.
FERNHEIMER: Did you guys go shopping together downtown? At each other's stores?
GORDON: Yeah, we used to go to the men's stores. They always kidded me that I--I
liked to have good clothes, and I--I bought a lot of clothes, 'cause--that's
probably true! I haven't changed much! --(laughs)--
FERNHEIMER: Was it hard to find clothes, as such a tall man?
GORDON: Well, it--'til I got there, yeah. I never had on a st--I never had
a suit. And only--my pants, they said, were, oh, high-water pants,
01:12:00which meant they come up to--top of my socks. And, uh, so I went to Kentucky.
I--I had one suit, I--when I got there, and that was at Sears & Roebuck. And
took me a while, but for--a while, I--I kinda caught on what I wanted and
started buying cashmere sweaters, some other things, that worked out--a little
different dress code. --(laughter)-- It's a--
FERNHEIMER: Little bit different from your--uh, from growing up in Crofton.
GORDON: In Crofton, I had two pair of pants and that's all I had, and a jacket.
FERNHEIMER: Wow. (??)
GORDON: Didn't--and--and a corduroy hat you wore.
FERNHEIMER: Now, how did you have the funds to be doing all this kind of
shopping? Was this--were you working while you were in school, or--
GORDON: Well, I was in ROTC [Reserve Officers' Training Corps].
FERNHEIMER: Oh, that's right!
GORDON: And I get--geet to there, that--I would say--I was in the Air Force
ROTC, which paid you thirty dollars a month. And that was--that time was good
spending money. And I used that, and my--my father was--didn't know what
things cost and gave me money, so I spent some of that. But, uh,
01:13:00basically, I'd have to say one of the things that was, uh, most impressive to
me, and what I enjoyed the most and eventually was very beneficial was the--the
Air Force ROTC. I was in an organization called the Arnold Air Cadets. Arnold--a
commander of the United States Air Force during World War II was a guy named
"Hap" Arnold. He was a four-star general, and they named this honorary society
the Arnold Air Cadets. I was elected president of the ca--cadets, and I was also
elected core commander. I was the lead guy in the ROTC. When the parade walked,
I walked up front, and give everybody commands. So, that turned out to be a
very--thing--something I enjoyed. Made great grades, I always got As. Uh, didn't
in the other courses, but I did there, and got paid thirty dollars a
01:14:00month and loved it. And the--
FERNHEIMER: Wha--
GORDON: --then, when I graduated, I got commissioned to second lieutenant, so--
FERNHEIMER: How did you get started in ROTC? What--what motivated you to join?
Was that the same time you were doing basketball, or after? Tell me what was--
GORDON: Same--same time. What--at that time, when you went to Ken--Kentucky, and
any land grant school, you had to take two years of ROTC, that was mandatory.
FERNHEIMER: Okay.
GORDON: And you wore the uniform one day a week. Then, after the--two years, you
didn't have to take it. But if you signed up, wanted to take it, then they paid
you thirty dollars a month. So, I signed up to take that, and it ended up
getting me commissioned. It was--time of the Korean War. I went in, graduated
June the fifth, went into service July the first, and spent some time at Fort
Knox, and then got shipped to Europe and spent three years in Europe,
01:15:00which was an interesting experience.
FERNHEIMER: Wow, I can imagine.
GORDON: And it was--different time. Again, basketball, University of Kentucky,
got me friendly with a--a general, who was a commanding officer of the unit I
was with. And he took--took me under his wings, and kinda took me everywheres he went.
FERNHEIMER: What was it like? I'm just trying to imagine, coming from this small
town in Crofton, Kentucky. First to come to the University of Kentucky, which
was, what, about seven thousand--
GORDON: Think it was about fifty-five hundred at that time.
FERNHEIMER: Fifty-five. So, already so much larger than the whole town of
Crofton together. What was--
GORDON: Ten times larger.
FERNHEIMER: --(laughs)-- What was that like? That, and then, you know, moving
from there--the experiences that ROTC opened for you to go overseas. Talk to me
about that--
GORDON: It was, uh--
FERNHEIMER: --a little bit.
GORDON: It was, uh, not really scary. It was--uh, I didn't know it, I
01:16:00didn't know what I wanted, I didn't know what I was looking for. The basketball
gave me some kind of comfort level of things I knew I could do. But I didn't
know anybody, and wasn't--didn't do anything very social. Uh, didn't get into
the fraternity 'til the second year.
FERNHEIMER: Oh, okay.
GORDON: Uh, uh, and basically, it was an awakening to me. It was the type of
life I'd never known. I'd never had any social life to amount to anything, and
never been around people. To understand what the University of Kentucky was like
in the--in--when I went, it was right at the end of World War II. Everybody came
on the GI [Government Issue] Bill that was there. They were--I was seventeen,
and the people there were twenty-two and twenty-three and twenty-four,
getting out of the service. They'd been through a lot, they were
01:17:00interested in having a good time. They were hard drinkers and hard partiers, and
so forth. Uh, and not--I--I wasn't involved in it that much--that--that group
was. And so, you didn't know too many of them. You got to know some of 'em, but
you--you found somebody that you were comfortable with, uh--
FERNHEIMER: Were there any in the fraternity who were--who were there from the
GI Bill, or--
GORDON: Yeah, were some--
FERNHEIMER: --who were veterans?
GORDON: --several. There was--were two or three or four that were there from
the--been in World War II.
FERNHEIMER: Do you recall their names?
GORDON: Leonard Fine (??), I know was one. He was from Boston. There's two or
three others. And basically, I had to work my way into--you know, I didn't have
a car. If I had a date, I had to catch a bus. I didn't know about taxis and so
forth. And I hung out a lot around the student union, when they had dances, and
so forth and so on, 'til I knew my way around a little better and I had more
friends. And then, all of a sudden, I--I began to have a lot of
01:18:00friends, at fraternity, yeah, but in the non-Jewish part of the university. And
got involved in a lot of organizations, and really enjoyed 'em, and made
some--some very close friends.
FERNHEIMER: Besides the, uh, Interfraternity Council, what other organizations
were you involved with?
GORDON: Well, I was president of Arnold Air Cadets, and I was, uh, accountants
(??) for a while--two or three things around the business school: marketing--uh,
marketing organization. And I was involved in several other things, and I
can't--I gotta--have to look--my paper, what--but it--(??)
FERNHEIMER: That's all right. It was a while ago!
GORDON: --but--but it--it was--uh, I found it easy to get involved. I think
it--basketball helped some of that, but my country--being a kind of country boy
helped. And I've always looked at myself--is I'm a country boy. I was raised in
the country. Uh, I don't think I was ever the most sophisticated guy around. I
don't think I was the most educated guy around. But I think I can
01:19:00compete very well with them in conversation, and drive to do something. So, I
guess that's, uh, kind of the story of where things went.
FERNHEIMER: How do you think your experiences, uh, in those--in the cadets
and--and abroad after UK influenced your ambitions? You talked a little bit
about that before, that you--some of these guys in the fraternity came--you
know, also sons of merchants, came to UK, fully with the expectation of going
back and working in their fathers' stores. When--when did you know that you had
different expectations for yourself? And how did your experiences at UK or in
the military shape that?
GORDON: Well, I knew------(??)----had different expectations when I came out of
the service and went back and went to work for my father--
FERNHEIMER: Okay.
GORDON: --where there was no social life there whatsoever. At night,
01:20:00there was no place for me to go. Was one--one restaurant in town. I could go up
there and hang out.
FERNHEIMER: So, this was after you graduated, or w--did you--
GORDON: This was after I graduated, and after--
FERNHEIMER: Did you go home in the summers--
GORDON: --hmm--
FERNHEIMER: --while you were still in school?
GORDON: Yeah, I went home in summers, worked, and that was never a problem. Then
one--one summer, I went to ROTC camp, so I went to Langley Field, Virginia, and
all the--the junior members of the Air Force ROTC went to this program, which
was fun. We had mostly football players and me. Uh, they all were in these
programs. But it--it, uh--I guess I'd always thought I wanted to do something in
retailing. And thought I'd start looking for a job. And then I looked, and I
could go--go on from there what to do. So, I started looking. I looked in
Nashville, I looked in Chicago, and I looked in Louisville. And I'd
01:21:00always thought merchandising was a very interesting--I'd--I'd graduated from
school with a B.S. [bachelor of science] in bus--business management, so I
always thought merchandising would be very interesting. And I applied for jobs.
Well, while I was here for an interview for one of my jobs, at Harvey's, I met
Bernice in a blind date at the temple. And then--and at the same time, I was
offered jobs in other places, and I thought, well, she's really not so bad, and
maybe I oughta take that job down there and see how that works out. So, I did
that, it worked out pretty well. We got married. This was in, uh, September one
year, we got married in July the next year. And, uh, got a job, fifty-five
dollars a week. We lived in a place called Honeymoon Hills out here,
01:22:00and the rent was sixty-nine dollars a month. And that worked out very well, I--I
was at Harvey's. I got promoted, uh, and they made me a buyer. And they said,
"You're going on a buying trip to New York, and we want you to buy merchandise
for your department." It was women's sportswear. --(laughter)-- And I said,
"Well, who's going with me?" And the president of the store said, "Nobody. But
you go first, and you make a mistake, we'll talk to you about it. You go the
next time and you make a mistake, we'll give you a--a serious discussion about.
If you go the third time, make a mistake, you won't be here any longer."
--(laughs)-- And so, it's, uh--I did that, and I did well. I got promoted there
and they gave me more business. And then, about that time, a new store opened
across the street, which was Cain-Sloan's company, and it was a bigger store in
town. And they offered me a job. At that time, I was making maybe seventy-five
dollars a week, and they offered me a job at sixty-five hundred dollars a year
to come over there. And I decided--at that time, I was married, and I
01:23:00said, "I think I'll take it, 'cause I could stand the money." Well, got over
there, turned out to--doing too well, and the president of the store was John
Sloan. And John Sloan was a old line Southern socialite. He was the head of what
they call the Hillsboro Hounds, the foxhunters. He was a member of the country
clubs--uh, big business leader. Called me in after I'd been there about a month,
two, and said, "Joel, we like you. We want you--to keep you here, we want you to
stay here. Want you to be comfortable. We've never been able to keep a Jew.
Every Jew we've ever hired left shortly," and--
FERNHEIMER: How did that make you feel?
GORDON: --(laughs)-- I was--he says, "You know, we've--they've--some of 'em have
done very good, but we could never make 'em happy. They were--too big a hurry to
move, and we want you to stay and work with us and let us try to work--grow
together." I said, "Well, fine, I--fine." And then also, after that, we became
good friends. He used to have--uh, we'd have--competition for sales,
01:24:00and he'd have us out to his farm. He had this big farm: a swimming pool, big
house, and he'd always tell Bernice, "Come on, pretty girl! Get in the truck
with me, I want to drive you around the farm!" Well, they were very nice to us,
he was very solicitous of us. And then, he'd always come talk to me. And he'd
come say, uh, "You know Bernard Worthen?" (??) I'd say, "Yeah, I know Mr.
Worthen." "Had dinner at his house last night. Nice guy, isn't he?" Well, he was
Jewish, he was making--and he'd come to the next one, he'd say, "You know Dan
May?" (??) I says, "Well, I know Dan May very well." Well, Dan May was a very
big leader, and very liberal.
FERNHEIMER: What do you mean by that?
GORDON: Well, he was very into integration, very into--say--he says, "You know,
I just love Dan. We grew up together, and I think he's a wonderful guy. But
damn, why does he have to talk about integration every time we get together?"
Says, "You know, I get tired of listening to that, 'cause he--that's all he
wants to discuss." But he--too--he was a leader, in--in getting that
01:25:00done. And then, we--you know, we gave--he--he introduced me to a lot of people.
He'd have people come in, said, "I got big sport"--(??)
FERNHEIMER: He--who--sorry to interrupt.
GORDON: "I got a big sports writer, name--his name is Fred Russell, friend of
mine. He's coming in. Why don't you have dinner with us? He'd--he'd like that,
or lunch with us." So, he was very nice to--my father died, and my relatives
were all immigrants. They wasn't the--the fine--fanciest group of people you'd
come--he'd come out there and sit down in the living room, sat there for
two-and-a-half hours. It felt--made himself at home. And so, we ended up--it was
a good (??) relation, but he--he never backed off, and we would--first time they
recruited a Vanderbilt Black basketball player, he said, "They can have my
tickets, I'll never go again!"
FERNHEIMER: That was Sloan?
GORDON: Yeah. Said, "Never"--he'll--"I'll never go again. I don't need to do that."
FERNHEIMER: So, what do you think made him so open to working with and trying to
retain you as a Jewish employee, and so opposed to integration of
01:26:00African Americans?
GORDON: He kinda thought--I think my Kentucky thing, the fact that I played
basketball and so forth, and I--I--I cultivated a lot of friends. I got along
very well with the people socially in the store, and socialized with a lot of
the young people. And he liked my wife, and it was kind of a mutual admiration
society. And we--I worked there for thirteen years. And, uh, his--when I left,
he couldn't have been nicer, and stayed in touch and kinda encouraged me to do
some things.
FERNHEIMER: How did--how did you feel about his attitudes towards integration,
given your own background, growing up in Crofton--
GORDON: Well, see--
FERNHEIMER: --that was so mixed?
GORDON: --to understand it all, you gotta be--be through it. In 1965, I was in
retailing downtown. That's when everything hit the fan. That's when--on
Fifth Avenue downtown, and we were on Fifth Avenue, there was W.T.
01:27:00[William Thomas] Grant, there was Kroger--Kresge's, there was Kress's, there was
Woolworth, all of 'em--
FERNHEIMER: Here in Nashville?
GORDON: And all of 'em had soda fountains. They were segregated soda fountains.
Nashville has, as I mentioned, you know, a lot of educational institutions, uh,
and a lot of Black schools.
FERNHEIMER: Um-hm.
GORDON: Tennessee State, Fisk, uh, American Medical--Hubbard Medical School.
Until 1965, seventy-five percent of all the Black doctors and dentists in the
country graduated from Meharry Medical School, which is a Black school here in
town. And they came here--they trained these people very well to be non-violent.
Martin Luther King, but--other people (??), several of--big leaders now--guy's
in Congress, what's his name? From, um, from, um--
FERNHEIMER: Lewis?
GORDON: Hmm?
FERNHEIMER: John Lewis?
GORDON: Lewis, yeah. He--he trained 'em. And they were non-violent.
01:28:00They come marching into downtown, singing. When the--somebody was hitting them
over the head, they just took it and walked on. Well, that started on and on,
and then, all of a sudden, these white thugs, when they'd go in and sit down at
the lunch counter, would hit 'em over the head with everything, drag 'em off the
stool, and drag 'em out into the streets.
FERNHEIMER: Whoa.
GORDON: And it was horrible. And then, like, it--when I was at Cain-Sloan's,
we'd had days where there'd be protests going on downtown, we'd have a full
store with all people open at nine o'clock in the morning 'til six o'clock at
night, sales zero. Nobody would come to town, they were scared. They--why, they
would have lines, the people would form protests. We had a little dinette down
in the basement, they'd--for--and protest around that and line up outside in the
street. They'd line up outside the doors. Nobody was going to come--go through
it. So as loud as the left (??)--it--it got to be more and more problems,
what--the fact that these people were well-trained--one of 'em went
01:29:00to see the mayor, who'd--this one young woman, and what kind of--they--we had
something here called the Davis Society. This was a group of people in town that
was working to--to support integration--white people--and key people in town.
And the girl made appointment with, uh, the mayor. They were standing on the
city hall steps--ask the mayor to come out and talk to 'em. She come out--and he
come out, she says, "Can I ask you a question?" He says, "Yes." "So, do think
this is right?" And his answer was no. And that kind of broke the log--broke the
log (??) where--his name was Ben West. Well, I've showed you what--a--John
Seigenthaler Center--
FERNHEIMER: --mm-hm--
GORDON: --John was very involved with Bobby Kennedy. And they took a trip down
through Mississippi and Alabama, and John got beat up in Mississippi and was in
the--hospitalized for about six weeks. And they were leading the integration
fight. And Bobby Kennedy was, of course, big leader of that. And it
01:30:00all--Nashville was a key, just, cornerstone of it all. The--the schools started
here, and then it went--they took buses up to Selma and all those places. And
ultimately, it broke. They integrated the--the lunch counters, they integrated
the--the restaurants and integrated the theaters. And the--the schoo--the first
Black athlete in the Southeastern Conference was a guy name Perry Wallace, who
was--basketball player at--at Vanderbilt, and a very bright guy. And he--go into
job (??), and the coach asked me to help him, and I got him a job working at the
Jewish Community Center day camp, and he made about ten dollars a day.
FERNHEIMER: Hmm.
GORDON: And he's gone on to--now he's a big attorney, and very involved in
Washington. He came back to Vanderbilt, I run into him. I said, "Perry, you--you
remember me?" "Yeah!" Said, "You're the first white man that treated me like a
human." Well, you know that's--that was--back in the times, people
01:31:00just didn't--didn't have anything to do with him. He was--(??)
FERNHEIMER: So how did that work? How were you able to get him a job at the JCC?
What year was that?
GORDON: This was--that's 1969.
FERNHEIMER: Okay, so that's already way--
GORDON: Well, it didn't--wasn't that--he was the first athlete to be recruited.
FERNHEIMER: Wow!
GORDON: In '69. So--
FERNHEIMER: Yeah, but--(??)
GORDON: --and when he went to--to Mississippi--and then they put skunks under
his things, they threatened him. He had a hard time.
FERNHEIMER: And how--talk to me about the Jewish Community Center. How--were
they--were they receptive? Did you have to push hard? How did that go down?
GORDON: Well, you know, they're--now, there--the rabbi at the temple was a
leader. Two-thirds of the temple was not--fruits (??) of his efforts. They--
FERNHEIMER: Who was the rabbi?
GORDON: Huh?
FERNHEIMER: Who was the rabbi?
GORDON: The rabbi was--was--Falk.
FERNHEIMER: Falk.
GORDON: Rabbi Falk.
FERNHEIMER: And which--
GORDON: F-A-L-K.
FERNHEIMER: Which temple was this?
GORDON: And this temple, Ohabai Shalom.
FERNHEIMER: And so, he was--
GORDON: He was kinda--he was one of the leaders and--of the ministers
01:32:00and rabbis that were protesting segregation.
FERNHEIMER: And so, you just walked in and said, "Hey, I need a job for Perry"?
Or how--
FERNHEIMER: No, well--
GORDON: --did that go?
GORDON: --well, was--I--I'd been involved at the Center for years, and I knew
they needed-----------(??) I say, "You know, got this young man, Perry Wallace.
He needs--want to send him out, talk to him." They hired him as a counselor. And
where we got close to him--my sons were at camp out there, and they come home.
They said, "We like Perry, can we have him over for dinner?" So, we had
cook-outs with him during the summer.
FERNHEIMER: And this is while he was on a--he was a coun--he started--camp
counselor after graduating Vanderbilt or before?
GORDON: Who's that--for--(??)
FERNHEIMER: Perry?
GORDON: No, after--while he was at Vanderbilt.
FERNHEIMER: While he was at Vanderbilt, he was a camp counselor at the JCC?
GORDON: Yep.
FERNHEIMER: Interesting. And your--your sons knew him from--
GORDON: They went--they went to camp.
FERNHEIMER: Oh, okay.
GORDON: He was one of their counselors.
01:33:00
FERNHEIMER: Okay.
GORDON: And they'd come home, say, "Can we bring him? Can we have him over for dinner?"
FERNHEIMER: And did he?
GORDON: Yeah, he came several times. We'd--we'd cook-out. He was--very nice guy.
Very smart guy.
FERNHEIMER: And I want to go back a little bit. At this point, your sons were
old enough to be going to basketball camp. Can you tell me when and how your
children were born, uh, kind of in connection with where you were in your
career? So, we were talking a little bit about--
GORDON: Well, my--my--my oldest daughter, she was the one that wrote the letter
about wanting to stay in integrated schools.
FERNHEIMER: Sheri. (??)
GORDON: Sheri. That's right, (??) she--she--she says 'til today, that was the
best move we ever move for her, 'cause she ended up being vice-president of the
student body. She was there when a guy got killed in the hallway for
the--fighting integration, and she learn--she had a--she learned how to live
with people and had great respect for what was taking place.
FERNHEIMER: She--so she was born when?
GORDON: The--she was born in 1956.
FERNHEIMER: Okay. So, she was in high school when things--
01:34:00
GORDON: Yeah.
FERNHEIMER: --were integrated?
GORDON: Yeah.
FERNHEIMER: Okay.
GORDON: And all her friends left, having a big thing. They all went to private school.
FERNHEIMER: What school was this that she stayed in?
GORDON: She was--went to Hillwood High School.
FERNHEIMER: Okay.
GORDON: But her friends went to University School, or MBA [Montgomery Bell Academy].
FERNHEIMER: But she--did you want to move her to the University School, or did--
GORDON: No, I didn't like the school, 'cause I thought it was--is a--kind of a
drug hang-out. And I didn't--didn't--at that time, was--people beginning to
smoke pot, and they were around, and I didn't think it was a good thing. Now, my
Frank and--and my younger daughter went to school there.
FERNHEIMER: So, was Sheri the only one to graduate from public school?
GORDON: No, my--she and my oldest son graduated--both from Hillwood High School,
which is right in our neighborhood, almost.
FERNHEIMER: And her older--tell me the children again, I'm sorry, I--
GORDON: Well, she's the oldest.
FERNHEIMER: She's the oldest.
GORDON: Bobby is the--Robert--Bobby is--she's--Sheri's sixty, Bobby is
fifty-eight, Frank is fifty-four, and Gail's forty-five.
01:35:00
FERNHEIMER: Okay. And so, Sheri and Bobby both went to Hillwood.
GORDON: Yeah.
FERNHEIMER: So she was there when it was integrating, and he was there after it
had already integrated.
GORDON: Yeah, well, he was there at the time it was integrating, too. Same
thing. But she was there the first year.
FERNHEIMER: Yeah, 'cause they're just two years apart.
GORDON: So,-----------(??) she had a good experience there, although there was a
lot of turmoil. And now, it's--it's much more--calmer. Now, we--we've got a lot
of busing. A lot of people not happy with that. On both sides, whites and Blacks.
FERNHEIMER: How did you and Bernice feel at the time about her--her gumption,
her decision to stay? Were--
GORDON: We kinda supported it. We thought she was very involved. And she was in
student government, and she--good experience for her, and--only reservation we
had, we were scared of what was going to happen. You know, it wasn't
01:36:00people--just protesters. People fighting, hitting people with clubs. They--they
blew up the Jewish Community Center. One night, they--turned on the radio, and
somebody put--stuck dynamite in front of the Jewish Community Center, blew
the--blew the front out of it.
FERNHEIMER: What year was that?
GORDON: That was in--'bout '66, '67.
FERNHEIMER: And who was responsible for it, do they know?
GORDON: They caught a guy, yeah. Those guys--white supremacists. And then, they
had all kind of threat--as to the (??) temple. They--they caught some guy with
dynamite coming out there, and a co--(??) there--there's somebody--and give him
an early warning. They found him, he was coming to blow up the temple. See, you
know, things have changed, the world is changed. Retailing. When I was in
retailing, we had a 350,000 square-foot store. We had one woman that walked
around in--a purse, looking at shoppers, hoping to--not hoping, but looking to
see if she saw anybody shoplifting. Today, they got armed guards,
01:37:00police there, costs 'em a lot of money. The Center, we never had anything.
Today, we got policemen there around the clock, supervising--the door open. (??)
FERNHEIMER: At the JCC?
GORDON: Yeah. Temple--every time, they got policemen--police cars parked out
there. So, it's a different world, it's a--you know, whether you want to say it
or not, your life has been changed. And it's a--I'm sure you have protection at
the synagogue when we have big things.
FERNHEIMER: Yeah, and the hol--especially now since the election, as well.
There's been--
GORDON: Yeah, so that's--
FERNHEIMER: --change again.
GORDON: It's, uh--so to (??) change--you change your lifestyle. I mean, you
know, I--when I was developing the company, I could leave my office, throw my
bag over my back, and thirty minutes--be at the airport, park the car, and get
on an airplane. Today, I gotta get out there an hour-and-a-half before--
FERNHEIMER: Yeah.
GORDON: --and not make it. But you know, I--like I--and also, we had a--we had
a--a tub here. I could catch a plane at six-fifteen in the morning,
01:38:00go darn well where I wanted to go in the country, have a day's meeting, get back
home at midnight. You can't do that anymore. That's all out the window.
FERNHEIMER: Yeah.
GORDON: So, it does change how business is doing, and it--expenses, extra
expenses running a business now are big, just providing people that you never
had to provide before.
FERNHEIMER: Yeah. Let me shift us back. I want to come back to your professional
life, and--and maybe we'll spend some more time tomorrow talking about that. But
I want to sit a little bit with that early married life, you and Bernice, here
in Nashville. And I remember you writing in the book--a couple of things really
stood out to me. One was that--(laughs)--you were both members of the same
synagogue, but the rabbi didn't think--you didn't think that the rabbi thought
too much of you at the time. And it sounded like it had to do with a fix-up that
went--not in--
GORDON: Well, that's right.
FERNHEIMER: --terms of you getting married with Bernice.
GORDON: Well--
FERNHEIMER: Tell me a little bit about that, and your--
01:39:00
GORDON: Well, I went--
FERNHEIMER: --early involvement with the Jewish community.
GORDON: Well, I went to--well, it had nothing to do with--involvement here, but
when I went in the service, I was in England. And Germany. But I was traveling
pretty good. I was--met a lot of people, I was introduced to--we were at a
restaurant one night, and a--a woman played a piano there, called
over--be--called me over, and says, "You know, you available tomorrow?" I said,
"What's"--"I'd like for you to come to my house for brunch. I want you to meet
my daughter." Well, her daughter turned out to be a guy na--a woman named
Virgi--Virginia McKenna, who was in the movie, Born Free, and was a beautiful
lady. And I was going out with her some, and then the rabbi comes down to
the--to my base, and I go over to meet him and tell him, well, my name,
who--where I was from. He says, "Well, I'm from Nashville. I know a lot of your
relatives." We call my relatives and told them he met me and I was doing fine
and everything. That was fine. Then he started calling me and says,
01:40:00uh, "I got some friends from the States, they're traveling through here, and
they got a daughter and--like for you to take her out." I said fine, I'd do
that. Well, that happened about three times and I found I didn't have a lot in
common with the people he was introducing me to. Uh, wasn't anybody I was
particularly interested in, and why would I go up there? I had other things to
do. So, I started telling--like, I was busy, couldn't make it. Well, when I come
back from Europe, he had married an English woman. And we were on the same boat.
But I was an officer, and I was up on the top deck with--they had music and
bars, and they had services every Friday night, down in the hole, where people
were sick, so--and I didn't feel like I wanted to go. He tried to get me to go,
I said, "I can't make it." Well, some way, he didn't like that. And he told some
people that I--I might have been the biggest bum he'd ever met, and he
--got to my mother, and she didn't like that, so--he and I wasn't very
01:41:00good friends, but later we made up. But Bernice was a Sunday school teacher
there, and she was very into it. He never--congratulated her. He never said any
one thing. We went to see him, asked him questions, he'd say, "I'm not involved
in family arguments." We got in (??) family arguments. We don't know, "Tell us
some"--well, it--well, he ended up marrying us, it worked out well. After that,
I--most of my friends belonged to the temple. And I felt more comfortable at the
temple, 'cause it wasn't as much Hebrew. And I understand things much better.
So, we joined the temple, been a good experience. We go to what's
a--Conservative synagogue a lot--to a lot of things. We go to Orthodox for a lot
of things. Go to Chabad for some things. I give--support the Orthodox temple. I
support--support Chabad, and I support the temple I go to in a big way. I
had--did support the new Mika, (??) and I made a donation. And they
01:42:00called me one day and they said, "Well, you know, you've got this donation,
that's bigger than our dues. Why don't we just make you a member?" I said,
"That's fine." Well, that hit the fan. As quick as I--they made me a member, I
get calls from the president of the temple, "You can't do this. You've got too
much respect in the community, and if people see you doing that, a lot of people
are going to follow you, and please don't do that." Oh, but he said, "You've got
to resign." And I said, --(laughs)-- "These people can't tell me where I can
join. I'll join!" Just, "No, you can't do it." Well, I called him back, I says,
"Count me as a donator. Don't--don't make me a member." And it--it worked out,
but they were very upset at the temple that I would do that, 'cause--said, (??)
"Were you mad at temple?" (??) I said, "No, not at all." "Well," he said, "you
know, it don't--don't look good if you join." 'Cause I--I'd been very involved
at the temple, too.
FERNHEIMER: And when was this? This was--you told me at lunch about this story,
yeah. (??)
GORDON: This is probably fifteen, sixteen years ago.
FERNHEIMER: And this was around the time when there was a rabbi,
01:43:00whose name, um, is escape--
GORDON: Rabbi Falk. No.
FERNHEIMER: Was it Rabbi Falk? Who was the rabbi you had mentioned at lunch, who
gave the--
GORDON: The sermon?
FERNHEIMER: The sermon about intermarriage that--
GORDON: Steve Fuchs. (??)
FERNHEIMER: Okay.
GORDON: Brilliant! Brilliant guy. But he had a Germanic personality, with no
give in it. I was his advisor. He--he always come to me and says, "Now this is
what, uh, board's offering me, and this is what I want. What do you think I
should say? Or what do you think I should do?" But we worked out where he got a
pretty good salary. But he--he was not going to change his fundamentals.
FERNHEIMER: So, it sounds like you and Bernice have had a long history of being
involved--or at least--
GORDON: Very much so, we've been--
FERNHEIMER: --supportive of a lot of Jewish organizations.
GORDON: All of them! 'Bout--'bout--'bout whatever goes on, Jewish-wise, and
gentile-wise. I've been president of the Tennessee Performing Arts Center, which
is a Broadway series, and then (??) their own thing. It's, uh, downtown.
That's--it's one of the better things in town. I've been--got
01:44:00this--got this aw--award, is the--is the Health Care Hall of Fame. I've been,
uh, awarded the United Way De Tocqueville Society, which is the ten thousand
dollar-level givers, as a man of the--awardee of the year. I--so, I've had my
share of awards in the community, as well as the--the Jewish community. I really
have always loved the Center. When I first came here, I went out there to play
basketball, mostly. What I found, and what my love developed for the Center is,
it represented all Jewish groups. When I--one time, I knew every Jew in town.
FERNHEIMER: And this was in the early--when did you--
GORDON: This was in the late '50s and early '60s.
FERNHEIMER: Okay, when you first moved to town. (??)
GORDON: And then, when my kids came along, the typical thing they did, they went
to Sunday school. And Sunday school, all their friends went to Schwartz's
Delicatessen to have a sandwich, and then they went to the Center for afternoon
programs. BBG [B'nai B'rith Girls], AZA [Aleph Zadik Aleph], and so
01:45:00forth. And I went out there and coached basketball and hung around, waiting for
my kids, and I met everybody in town. And I liked it, the fact that I had
friends in the Orthodox group who--most of my friends in the forum (??) group
didn't know. They just had no--their paths never crossed. It's--uh, and I
developed a lot of respect for those people. And then, had a lot of friends at
the Conservative. And then later, the Chabad movement came along. I don't know,
I gave money to them, not knowing what I was doing, but I did. And I've been
very involved with the Federation, and, uh, I've been president of the Center.
My son--Bob's been president of the Center, and now Frank's president. But I
worked through all the committees early on, and that's where--guy convinced me
to--who's a friend of mine, was president, convinced me to get involved. And
I've enjoyed it. I was very involved at the temple. On the board for a number of
years, was asked to be president. Did not do it, for one reason. I
01:46:00was not comfortable being on the pulpit and reading the Hebrew. I just felt like
I could do it, but I'm just not comfortable doing it. And I also didn't want to
go to temple every Friday night. But I--I've stayed involved in the temple, I've
been a big financial supporter of the temple.
FERNHEIMER: And what--what has--what do you think shaped your strong commitment
to the community?
GORDON: I have--have strong feeling of--of those who've been fortunate to
receive--got a duty to share it. And I'm--found that my--one of my closest
friends in town's a guy named Tommy Frist. He j--he founded Hospital Corporation
of America. And he--I'm not in his class, by any means, but he's worth something
like six hundred million dollars, s--or more. And he's very
01:47:00charitable. Gives to everything. And I've tried to--try within my means. I've
tried to support it--you know, my, my biggest contributions are in the Jewish
community. But the other things, schools and other things, my kids have taken
advantage of going there, so I feel if--if I don't support it, who does?
FERNHEIMER: Yeah.
GORDON: And you can't expect people to do things for you if you don't go back
and give the opportunity for somebody else. I've supported, uh, university.
Not--maybe not as much as I should, but I have substantially supported some
scholarship programs and building programs, athletic programs.
FERNHEIMER: What--what--was that something that your parents imparted in you?
Was that something that you learned at University of Kentucky? Where--where does that--
GORDON: No, I don't think my parents--my parents were charitable, but it was a
different league. They worked very hard for what they had, and if
01:48:00they gave away a hundred dollars, that was a big gift. I decided the--that I
wanted to do something in memory of my parents, and they were the Jews in
Crofton--there'd never been--well, (??) never going to be anymore. So, I started
talking to people up there. "What can"--uh, Bernice convinced me to do this.
"What can we do for the--can I do for the community?" And somebody'd say, "Wanna
do a music show at the school, and do this?" And somebody came up to me, and
says, "You know, our kids don't have anything. Would you help us do something?"
I said, "What are you thinking about?" He says, "What a--what--well, how 'bout a
little park? There's twenty acres of land out here, so forth, and somebody's
gonna give that to us, so we get started." I said, that sounded like a good
idea, I'd like to do that. Well, we made--I give him a little money. It wasn't
anything shocking, big. They got started. Well, the coal miners, when they get
to be fifty-five years old, they have to come out from underground, because they
get black lung. So, they're there, so we go up there. Well, and they (??) said,
"Would you come up on Sunday afternoon?" There's people running
01:49:00bulldozers, there's people laying brick, and Bernice looks at me and says, "You
know what you done? You hadn't--you haven't done anything big. You've just
activated the people. They're working!" And they were. We gave 'em the money,
and they got started, and they put it together. I said, "Well, you know, I want
to do it." I said, "I'd just like to put up a plaque in memory of my parents."
"No, no, no, no, we're going to name it the Gordon Park." I said, "Well, that's
fine." I said, "But I'd like something that says Ben and--to the memory of Ben
and Tillie Gordon, citizens of Crofton for fifty-four years, in search of the
American dream. And I'd like a little mezuzah by it." "No problem. We'll get
artist to draw it up." They did, I paid for it, and I've continued to pay. Every
time something goes wrong, I tell 'em to call me, I'll help 'em. And then, I'm
trying to get this place a train. We've had a train, caboose, but it's been
there for about fifteen years, and it's worn out. So, it's a big satisfaction
thing to me. And when they dedicated--it--it's won awards several
01:50:00years for the Best Small Park In The Country. And it--
FERNHEIMER: When did it open? Just for a point of reference?
GORDON: It opened--uh, it's been open s--twenty years.
FERNHEIMER: So--
GORDON: And opened in, like, 1996.
FERNHEIMER: Okay.
GORDON: And when it opened, they had all kind of--and people there, African
Americans are the biggest users. 'Cause you go up there on any Sunday, and they
have a r--they will--have a clubhouse. They--they rent it out for family
reunions, from all over the country. People come in, you see all these fancy
cars. They're from Detroit, as they say. --(laughs)-- Like, they come and they
have cook-outs and they--so, they-----------(??) they take good care of things.
And guy that was--was running it up there, he's--they--he'd tell people they
were doing something wrong and stop. And they said, "Well, are you now Mr.
Gordon?" He say, "Yeah, I am! I'm telling you to do this!" So, he--he took care
of it. Well, when they had the dedication cer--ceremony, had a lot of
politicians there. And they asked me to say a few words, and I did.
01:51:00And a couple of old people who were friends of my parents said, "Joel, if your
mother and dad was alive today, what would they say?" I said, "Well, my dad'd
say two things." They said, "What's that?" I said, "Number one, he'd say, 'If
people were home working instead of up here playing around, they'd be a lot
better off.'" And I said, "The second thing he'd say is, 'I got a son that I
raised, he's obviously got more money he's got sense if he's up here giving it
away.'" And that would be the--that would be his feeling. He didn't think, if
you worked hard, you ought to give your money away.
FERNHEIMER: So, if it didn't come from your parents, where did that sense come
from? That sense of responsibility to give back?
GORDON: Think it was a group of people in the gentile community that I
associated with that were dedicated to doing things. And the Jewish
community--it was things I generated, myself. The Federation was a gift that
you'd give every year, and you--you'd get to start out in the low
01:52:00one, before you know it, you're giving pretty good every year. I gave--the--they
named a Jewish community center after me when I was president. I had made a big
gift to that. Now, that was probably the biggest gift I've ever made. Uh,
but--and I continue to do that. I continue to do the temple. But I just felt
like if you want to be involved, and you want to be part of the community,
then--then you better take a leadership position, or that (??) people don't
respect anybody that sits back and does nothing. And so, if you--if you want to
be acknowledged as being a leader and being involved, then you got out and--you
gotta get out and take a position. You gotta do some work. Many times, I've said
it's much easier to give money, if you've got it, than just work. Work is the
hardest part. And the people that do the work in organizations deserve a--awful
lot of respect. And I see that--in everything I got, there are people
01:53:00that obviously can't financially help, but they provide services and do things
that--more than money can buy. And I think that's fair (??), and I--I got
involved and, you know, like as Tommy Frist came to see me. And he started
something called the Alex de Tocqueville Society at--United Way of America. I
don't know how familiar you are with that.
FERNHEIMER: Um-hm.
GORDON: But that's, in my opinion, one of the key organizations that keeps all
communities alive. Well, you got to support that, 'cause they support all these
things, and what--what got me involved, I--when I was at Cain-Sloan's, they
asked me to head up the store campaign, which I did. And one of the things they--
FERNHEIMER: And this was in the '60s?
GORDON: Yeah, and one of the things they record--is you take a bus trip on a
Saturday or Sunday afternoon, a Saturday afternoon, and tour some of the
community facilities. Well, they took me into places, where--these were
handicapped children--were laying on bunk beds, slobbering all over their self,
and you go, "Well, they're--God, how --how do these people live like
01:54:00this? Why don't--why don't we do something for 'em?" Well, there--something's
been done, but not nearly enough. There's--there's kids that live
horrible--mess, you know? You--you couldn't--'til you get there, you couldn't
believe it happens. But they try to help with those things, and that kind of
motivated me to--to get involved and see if I couldn't--least try--help 'em with
some financial help or raise the money for 'em. And that's--that's been
satisfying, and I've stuck with that all the years, and that's--the people that
work with that are good friends of mine. And then, you get to--you get
a--recognized as somebody in town that's got some knowledge. Right now, I've
been invited--been involved with a group. What they're trying to figure out
is--and this is a good group of family called the Ingrams and others--how you
get people who give nothing, that can afford to give, how do you get them
motivated? That's--hard (??) job. You can't get 'em motivated. If they don't
want to give, they're not going to give. And, you know, I--I enjoy
01:55:00working with things like that, uh, to help the community, and, you know, and the
Jewish community, the--we've got a Jewish community that's very supportive. They
just raised seven million dollars for the temple. I headed up a campaign that
raised twelve million dollars for the Jewish Community Center, and about sixty
percent of it came from non-Jews.
FERNHEIMER: Wow.
GORDON: So, it's--uh, and then we've--all the (??) other organization in town
have been--ra--Jewish organizations have raised money. So, it's a very
supportive community.
FERNHEIMER: Let me ask you one or two more questions about this, and then maybe
we should stop for today--
GORDON: Either--(??) whatever you think.
FERNHEIMER: --um, and take a break, so that I can go back and re-group where--
GORDON: --um-hm.
FERNHEIMER: --where--what--what we wanna make sure we talk about tomorrow. But,
yeah, it's interesting to me to hear you talk about your life in Crofton, and
these sporadic interactions with the Jewish community, larger Jewish community,
going--driving--hiring a driver to go into Hopkinsville with
01:56:00your--your parents. And having a bar mitzvah training from a rabbi traveling out
to you. And then, I hear you talking about how important it is to give back to
the Jewish community, and how you give more to the Jewish community.
What--what--what shapes that--that motivation for you to give back,
specifically, to the Jewish community?
GORDON: I see my--my kids are much more Jewish than I ever was. If I had to be
honest with you, I think my early days of Judaism embarrassed me. If I were
walking down the street with my--when I was fifteen years old, with my mother
and father, I'd be on one side of the street, and they on (??) another. I didn't
want to--I didn't particularly want to be identified. And I knew I was Jewish
very much, but a Jew--it--I felt Judaism restricted me some. I mean, that's
that--now, I just had--not that I was trying to get away from it, but I just
felt--I saw everybody else that wasn't, and I was being punished for
01:57:00some things that I had no control over. Wasn't being punished, but I was being
denied some access to things. Uh, so then I saw my--my wife was largely
responsible, that--she had a better--much better Jewish education than I did.
Been involved in teaching Sunday school. And our kids, from day one, were
involved in Jewish activities, Jewish day school, Jewish Sunday school, and
their friends were primarily Jewish. And in--during that phase of my life, my
friends were primarily Jewish. My business associates were Jewish. And then, we
sold that company. --(burps)-- Excuse me. And Bernice took on some activities in
the--in the c--larger community, and I did. And--and then my interest
01:58:00didn't change from being Jewish. I found out the fact that I was Jewish didn't
turn people off like I thought it might. And then, I had more and more people
tell me, "You're different." I bet in--in my younger days, I had that said to me
all--time. "You know, you're not Jewish." "Yeah, I am." "Nah, you're not
Jewish." But I had things happen to me, like, in business, I had to--my first
company was General Care, and my business associates were Marvin Friedman (??),
Gerald Ayer Bush (??) and Eugene Parr (??), all Jewish. We were buying a piece
of property down in Jackson, Tennessee, which--I made a deal with a guy. He
needed the money very badly. Went to pay him off. I go down there with a guy,
and I've got the check, and he says, "Joel," says, "I just really enjoy doing
business with you. I--I like you! You're a great guy." Says, "I was just worried
to death they were gonna send one of them damn Jews down here for
01:59:00me--me to deal with!" And this guy kept telling me, "Tell him! Tell him!" I
said, "Nah, I can't tell him right now. I'll wait 'til he wants his check a
little worse (??) and then I'll tell him." So, I--finally, later, I say, "You
know, Tom, you wouldn't wanna take this check from me." He said, "Well, oh,
yeah. Well, we're going to close this deal." (??) I said, "Well, you just told
me you don't want to deal with them damn Jews, you know? I happen to be Jewish."
"Oh, no, no you're not." I said, "Yes, I am." "Oh, I never thought you were."
--(laughs)-- You get that. We--we were doing business with banks, and we had
some banks turn us down. President of the bank, later, was a friend of mine. He
says, "I tried to get you a loan. Got turned down." And--yep. "You know why?" I
said, "Well, I had some suspi--suspicion." Said, "Yes, it's--some people there
said they won't do business with them damn Jews." Well, you know,
that--that--all those things were out, and then, you know, it's, uh, at that
point, it didn't bother me, 'cause I knew where I was. Now, that--later, the one
--guys--I was with--some--a couple of my--some people-----------(??)
02:00:00for ten years, and that's true. But then, I started another business with
non-Jews. (??) My experience was so much better, and the company was so much
more successful.
FERNHEIMER: And that was the difference--the--the first company, with the other
Jewish business partners, that was in the '60s?
GORDON: We started that in '69.
FERNHEIMER: So, that was right after you left retailing--
GORDON: Right.
FERNHEIMER: --to get started.
GORDON: And I'll tell you how that come about through Bob Freyman and all. He's
been a key player of my--anything I've done.
FERNHEIMER: Yeah.
GORDON: And we'll get to that whenever you want to, but--
FERNHEIMER: Yeah.
GORDON: And then, I started this second one in '82.
FERNHEIMER: Wow. --(laughs)--
GORDON: And I started another one in '92. Started another one in '97.
FERNHEIMER: All right. Well, we will--I definitely wanna talk more about all the
business ventures tomorrow.
GORDON: I'm--I'm disappointed. I apologize for getting off a--off on the--
FERNHEIMER: No, no!
GORDON: --not--off your--(??)
FERNHEIMER: This is--this is great. In fact, there are still
02:01:00questions that I wanna--can we come back to it a minute? Just 'cause you just
mentioned it, about how--and this will probably be--I keep saying I'm gonna
stop, but I mean, I--you keep saying so many things I'm interested in following
up on, but--you mentioned that Bernice had a--a r--a much better--or, in your
words, uh--Jewish education, or Jewish background. Can you tell me a little bit
about her background, her family background?
GORDON: Well, she--her father was a tailor, had a tailor shop on West End. He
was kind of the tailor to the music crowd in town. And a little short guy, uh,
did the work--
FERNHEIMER: What was his name?
GORDON: Huh? Harry Wingart, W-I-N-G-A-R-T. Bernice's mother was a very talented
woman. She always said, "Anything's my eyes can see, my hands can do." And she
was a great seamstress. Her father took in all this work, and everybody thought
he did it. She--he took it home, she did it. --(laughter)-- Have--that was kind
of the saying, but, you know, Bernice lived a --hard to say, but
02:02:00being a tailor's daughter, some people thought that was below some of their
dignity. There--some of her friends were very wealthy, and she obviously wasn't.
And, uh, you know, she didn't belong to the country club, she didn't do the
things that they did and--
FERNHEIMER: Did Bernice have sisters and brothers?
GORDON: Huh? Yes, she does. She had two sisters and a brother.
FERNHEIMER: Is--uh--
GORDON: Her brother's, uh, lives--Chicago, and then went to Dartmouth. Very
bright young man. Married a--well, girl, a Jewish girl from here. He's had an
unbelievable career. She started a computer consulting company in Chicago
twenty-five years ago. Had unbelievable success. Then sh--her sister married a
guy who was a doctor, and he was a psychoanalyst, uh, in New Orleans. And then
he had a--she had a sister that married a boy in Hopkinsville, Kentucky,
somebody that I knew from my days in synagogue in Hopkinsville, and--
FERNHEIMER: What was that sist--what were the names of her siblings?
02:03:00
GORDON: Uh, Ruth Davis was the older sister. Arnold Wingart was her brother, and
Hannah Sable (??) was their other sister.
FERNHEIMER: Who--and Hannah was the one who married someone in Hopkinsville?
GORDON: Yeah.
FERNHEIMER: And what was her husband's name?
GORDON: His--Irwin Sable. Now they--they're both dead.
FERNHEIMER: Okay.
GORDON: And, uh, they were--or where'd they go to? See, Arnie went to Dartmouth,
and then he went to Columbia. He wanted to be a writer and did some things,
still writes poetry. But his wife has been a--a fantastic success, so he works
with her a lot now. They got one daughter. Got time for a story?
FERNHEIMER: Sure.
GORDON: Had daughter that went to Brown. Very bright. Met this young man in
Brown named Isaac Haxton, H-A-X-T-O-N. His mother is a professor of
02:04:00psychiatry at Syracuse University. H--father's a published poet at Syracuse
University in the English Department. They start dating at Brown, and he was a
very bright boy, a--very much into math. Got to playing online poker. Met with
some success. Went to his parents and says, "I wanna quite school and go to
playing poker on the circuit." They wouldn't hear of it, said, "Absolutely not."
He said, "Now, and--let--hear my story. I'll sign any papers you want to sign. I
want to take a year off and go play poker. I'll guarantee you in a year's time
I'll come back to Brown, and I'll finish my education." They--fin--he finally
convinced him to let him do it. He went out, she went with him. She
02:05:00quit school.
FERNHEIMER: What was her name? What's her name?
GORDON: Her name was, uh, Zoe. (??)
FERNHEIMER: Zoe.
GORDON: And she went with him, they lived together, traveled together. Went all
over the world. The first poker game he played in on a professional basis was
down in Nassau, won seven hundred and (??) sixty thousand dollars.
FERNHEIMER: Wow.
GORDON: And became a member of the pro-----------(??) but he ended up--I'm
always--check him on the internet, he--he won three or four million dollars. But
to his word, he said he was gonna come back. He did. Now, the two of 'em were
living together. They were thinking about gettin' married. They outlined online
poker, outlawed it. You couldn't play online poker in the United States. You
could go around the world. They traveled around the world, but finally, they
went to Malta, 'cause it was--spoke English, it was very much a--they
02:06:00moved to Malta and started playing. But before they went, they thought they need
to be married. So, they got--told their parents and said, "We need to be
married. We don't have time for a wedding. But we're going--for--fi--sign a
form, we're gonna get married at--in a little place in Las Vegas. --(laughter)--
And we'll guarantee you, a year from now, we'll be back. We wanna have a wedding
in the synagogue in Chicago." --(laughter)-- They went, came back in a year.
They had the wedding in Chicago, big wedding! Big wedding, and his poker friends
came. And Bernice and I were shocked. We expect to see a bunch of Rambo-ing,
(??) uh, tattooed people. They very bright, very personable, and very nice. And
it was a lovely wedding, and they come to all the family affairs. He comes to
everything. Quiet guy. You wouldn't think anything of him, but he's won big
money playing poker.
FERNHEIMER: Huh.
02:07:00
GORDON: Now they've just moved to, uh, Vancouver, 'cause they can play online
poker in Vancouver. They want to come back into this country, but he's put out
of business in playing online here, there--that's illegal.
FERNHEIMER: So that's Bernice's niece?
GORDON: Bernice's niece.
FERNHEIMER: And her husband.
GORDON: Yes.
FERNHEIMER: And, uh, no children yet, or--
GORDON: No children.
FERNHEIMER: Hmm.
GORDON: And her father's upset. (??) His father--they're both professors at
Syracuse. He's from Dothan, Alabama, the father is, and all their people from
Dothan was at the wedding. It's--good Jewish group of people from Alabama. It
was--was really--really interesting! So, people do a lot of interesting things
in their life.
FERNHEIMER: Yeah. So, Bernice and her brother and two sisters were
raised--did--did she go to synag--to Sunday school as a girl, or how did--
GORDON: Yeah, she went--well, she taught Sunday school. And she won that--and
what they call a Nathan Davis Award, which is a child that was a girl in
the Sunday school that showed the most Jewish potential, whatever it
02:08:00is. Most Jewish co--commitment.
FERNHEIMER: So, she feels more comfortable reading Hebrew?
GORDON: Well, she doesn't read Hebrew very well, but she--she felt more
comfortable with her Jewishness than I did to begin with.
FERNHEIMER: And is that--why do you think that is?
GORDON: Why what?
FERNHEIMER: Why do you think she felt more comfortable?
GORDON: She'd been--she'd been very exposed to it. She'd been--you know,
go--she--well, I never went to Sunday school. I never--I--I--my Jewish education
was probab--almost non-existent. I knew I was Jewish, there was never any
question what I was doing, but it was, uh, it was--I--I never had the background.
FERNHEIMER: --uh-huh--
GORDON: And my parents tried. They told me what, uh, what they knew. But,
uh--'cause my father's--particularly was raised in a house with a dirt floor,
and he always told me, "It's unbelievable, we were--we were kind of
02:09:00society." And I says, "How's that?" Said, "Well, they--they do it by different
things. We had a h--ox and a cow. And most people didn't have that, so that made
us in the upper strata!" And they used to--he's--to take (??)--when he was
twelve, thirteen years old, drive a wagon through the woods at night with cheese
and butter to the market to sell.
FERNHEIMER: Yeah.
GORDON: From their cow. And said he had to light straw to keep the wolves away.
So, somebody ask him, "Do you ever go back to Europe? Wanna go?" He said, no,
he'd been there, had no desire to go back.
FERNHEIMER: Hmm.
GORDON: Never did.
FERNHEIMER: And so, that's a really different experience, it sounds like, than
Bernice's family, who--
GORDON: Well, they--they were--they were here in the city. And they were not
social either. They didn't--you know, my parents and her parents were a good
match. My parents were much more entrepreneurial. My mother, when she was
eighty-six years old, was still very interested in the stock market and
was very current, and kept up with it every day. My daddy did the
02:10:00same thing. They--that was really foreign to anything they would think. My dad
was in a small town, and he'd watch people do things. And he'd see people
walking up and down the street, drinking Coca-Cola. He said, "That oughta be
pretty good." And he'd go to the bank, borrow five hundred dollars and buy five
hundred dollars' worth of Coca-Cola, and keep it, uh, keep that debt for a year,
and he'd pay it off in a year or so. Then he'd borrow another five hundred and
do the same thing. Well, he ended up doing very well with that. It took him
fifty years to do it, but he did. And so, you know, it's a--was a
different--there are--they--they were very compatible, because they were--had
the same background. They were both from Poland, all from Poland. Well, my
mother's from Russia, but--all from Poland. I've had a lot of work done by a
woman named Marion Weiner (??) up in Secaucus, New Jersey. And then, I got this
friend that's with Ancestry.com. She was--former social worker at the
02:11:00Center. And they've been coming up with things in my family history, and
it's--uh, find some interesting things. Found out my grandmother was nine years
older than my grandfather.
FERNHEIMER: Wow.
GORDON: And they think she'd been married before. And, you know, her name--her
name was Karnosky (??). My grandfather's Pilosky (??), so good combination of names!
FERNHEIMER: --(laughter)-- Yeah, that's--maybe--maybe we should stop here for today.
GORDON: Whatever you wanna do is fine with me, like--
FERNHEIMER: Um, I wanna--
GORDON: I enjoyed it, now--'cause Bernice said, "You enjoy talking about these
things." And when she looked at your stuff, she says, "This is complete." Said,
"You'll enjoy that, 'cause she's got it diagramed out very well."
FERNHEIMER: Well, thank you.
GORDON: I hope I didn't get too far off the script.
FERNHEIMER: No, this has been great! It's been wonderful. I--I really wanna
thank you for spending the time today. I--you know--we've been talking
for--I--it looks like two-and-a-half hours, so that's--
02:12:00
GORDON: Oh, have we?
FERNHEIMER: --m--I know! --(laughs)-- And you didn't even barely take a sip of
water. But I'm gonna--I'm gonna stop us here for today, and um, we'll--I'll go
back and kinda look and see what we didn't get the chance to talk about that I
still wanna talk about--
GORDON: Good.
FERNHEIMER: --tomorrow, and, um, if--
GORDON: Well, we've stayed--
FERNHEIMER: --talk more about--
GORDON: --started--
FERNHEIMER: --your business--
GORDON: --start at ten tomorrow?
FERNHEIMER: Uh, that sounds--
GORDON: Seems just--(??)
FERNHEIMER: --great.
GORDON: Huh?
FERNHEIMER: That works--
GORDON: Because I--yeah, I got--got to--on the way, though, I got to (??)--my
trainer, I gotta work out with at nine o'clock, so --(laughter)--be ten before I
get here.
FERNHEIMER: Do you want--do you want more time? Do you want--
GORDON: No. Ten'll--
FERNHEIMER: Okay.
GORDON: Ten'll be fine.
FERNHEIMER: Okay. Great. Um, let me t--
--(break in audio)--
GORDON: --with people who went to Harvard, Stanford, Yale, what have you, I know
they're smarter than I am, and--but I think I can common sense-'em to death with
my education--Kentucky. --(laughter)-- It's common sense-based.
FERNHEIMER: Yeah.
GORDON: And it's, uh, you know, it--it--it's been a key to--of anything I've
accomplished, I'd have to say that.
FERNHEIMER: Yeah. Good.
GORDON: And the basketball thing has been a--a part of it.
FERNHEIMER: Yeah. Well, I--I can hear that. You can see that in the
02:13:00way I've asked questions, and I can hear that in--in the way that you tell your
story in your book, and--and the way you talk, I-- (??)
GORDON: You've--you've got the letters from Rupp in your--your
thing-----------(??) okay.
FERNHEIMER: Yeah, you've got them, I think, in the book, right?
GORDON: Yeah.
FERNHEIMER: Um--
GORDON: You might want this, have it as part of your--
FERNHEIMER: Yeah, that would be great, um--
GORDON: And you know, some of these pictures, you wan--
[End of interview]
