MARK GORDON

I first met Mark Gordon in the spring of 1981. It wasn't diffiuclt. He lived three houses down from me, to the west. Mark and his siblings Scott, Tina and Tammy all kind of showed up in my yard one day. We all became fast friends.

The Gordon's were an interesting bunch. They were all free-spirited and friendly. Their dad seemed like a leftover hippie from the 1960's. Their dad used to don a clown suit and ride a unicycle in local parades. Mark could ride that unicycle as well. I couldn't. Mark's dad had a policy. If anyone skidded their bike in the driveway, the offender would then have to scrub the skidmark away with a toothbrush. Of course I didn't know this when I skidded my bike one day. But no, I never heard anything about it.

To this day, I have some odd tape recordings of all of them. We were just messing around, and occasionally singing. The Gordon's also came to my 10th birthday party at McDonald's. They had a husky named Neenah.

My friendship with Mark and his siblings only lasted about a year. Nothing really happened. We just stopped hanging around together. I think they all went to a Catholic school. So I didn't see Mark on a regular basis again until we got into high school.

Mark was pretty personable, and got along with most everyone. Although he did seem a bit scatterbrained. Meff told me that Mark once insulted him in some way, to which Meff calmly smiled and lightly patted Mark on the back. Mark started to freak out, and got all fidgety over it. Maybe he didn't like to be touched. I don't know.

In our freshman year, I had Mark in Mrs. Fischer's language class. Mark gave a speech where he recalled a time that he fell out of a car. He ended the speech with some sort of reference to "crusty grunts." Talk about skidmarks!

In my sophomore and junior years, I was the Gordon's paperboy. When I came to collect, Mark often answered the door. He was always friendly. Quite often he would be singing.

I believe that Mark dated class of 1990's Sally Graczykowski (pretty girl).

After highschool, Mark married class of 1991's Brenda Gillespie. Thus she became Brenda Gordon - obviously no relation to class of 1989's Brenda Gordon - who married fellow graduate Jeff Gordon, and is now today... still Brenda Gordon.

I believe Mark and Brenda had three children. But marital bliss was not to be. It looks like they got divorced a few years back. It looks like a somewhat messy affair too, with some apparent psychological evaluations that were performed.

Mark got into a little trouble with making harassing phone calls. One can guess that it was related to family matters. It's also interesting to note that Mark tried to take out a restraining order against fellow graduate Troy Rezachek. What the hell was that all about? I don't know. But Troy's wife's maiden name is Deanna Gillespie. I suspect that Brenda and Deanna are sisters. I'm guessing the divorce was an ugly one. Anyway, the restraining order was denied.

I don't have any additional information on Mark, other than the fact that he filed for bankruptcy about a year ago. I believe he is still in the Two Rivers area.

UPDATE - 2/20/06 - Mark has sent a couple of pictures. In the first one, you can see him in the middle. One (or eight) too many Mark? You can see his brother James (class of 1999) on the far right. The second picture is of his three boys. Click for the full-sized versions.





UPDATE - 11/13/06 - On Saturday, August 12th, 2006, Kevin Dehne and I took our second trip to Two Rivers. We stopped by a home where we thought Mark lived. But the woman there said Mark hadn't lived there in two years. So we thought we were going to miss him that day. However, several hours later, while visiting with Mike Polich and Ann Rank, they informed us that Mark was actually staying with his parents - who were only a block away. So we decided to give it a shot. Sure enough, Mark was there. We rang the doorbell. Inside, I could see a shirtless Mark fast asleep on the couch. One of Mark's kids answered, then went and woke him up. Mark let us in, gave Kevin a soda (I declined) and talked with us for awhile, while two of his sons played a Pac-Man game. We then went outside and took some pictures. Mark had a rather bizarre story about Mr. Wood. Perhaps he'll share it someday. You can see the pictures below.







UPDATE - 10/4/07 - Back in July, Erin Hynek visited Two Rivers. One night she went out with Paula Jonas and Brenda Gordon. While they were out, they ran into Mark. The results are the picture below.