ROTTERDAM Ex-town official recalled Former highway chief dead at 67 BY JUSTIN MASON Gazette Reporter
Harry Gordon was the type of guy who was always willing to lend a hand. He was a well-liked family man who loved the outdoors. And despite serving a dozen years as Rotterdam’s highway superintendent and another six on the Town Board, he never seemed to come across as a politician. “You’d never know he was in politics,” said Tony Cevera, chairman of the town’s Democratic Committee, who knew Gordon for more than 25 years. “He was just a regular all-around great guy.” Gordon, who enjoyed raising Texas longhorn cattle on his ranch in Pattersonville and was also once a Schenectady County sheriff’s deputy, died Friday. He was 67. The Draper School graduate was originally a registered Republican and made three unsuccessful bids to become highway superintendent during the early 1970s. When he switched his enrollment to Democrat several years later, he was elected to the Town Board. Then in 1989, Gordon attained what some thought was unattainable: He beat longtime Republican Highway Superintendent Augie Maura. In winning the election, he became the fourth member of the Gordon family to hold the position, following three uncles who ran the department from the 1920s until the late 1960s. “He did his job well,” recalled longtime Town Clerk Eunice Esposito. “He was always cheerful and I never heard any complaints from him.” But decades of politics wore on Gordon and soured him to his job. He shocked the Town Board by tendering his resignation just two months before the election in 2001. “I’m sick and tired of the fighting and arguing,” Gordon told the Town Board at the time. “I’m burnt out. I just don’t want to go through another campaign, to tell you the truth.” But Gordon never turned his back on the people he served with in office. About once a month he would have lunch with four other former Rotterdam officials who worked with him while he served the town. “It was a wonderful time in our lives,” recalled Vincent Fernandez, who once served on the Town Board with Gordon. “Everybody was friends and we all tried to do our best for the town.” Fernandez remembered Gordon as a man who enjoyed life to its fullest and lived to experience its many facets. He said the former highway chief did everything from serving on a lobster boat in Maine to running his own successful excavating business. “He just loved life,” he said. “He was kind to everybody.” Don DeAngelus, the former town attorney and onetime chairman of the Rotterdam Democratic Committee, described Gordon as...............http://www.dailygazette.net/De.....amp;EntityId=Ar00902
A wonderful person, leader and rare public servant. Harry always had time for the people, to listen to their concerns and problems. Very rare today. He will be in our thoughts and prayers.
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A wonderful person, leader and rare public servant. Harry always had time for the people, to listen to their concerns and problems. Very rare today. He will be in our thoughts and prayers.
