William Gordon

03/31/1919 – 11/21/2011
A former resident of Merrill Gardens in Bellingham, Bill Gordon, aged 92, passed away peacefully in Anacortes on November 21, 2011. He was born March 31, 1919 in Lumsden, Saskatchewan, Canada to Roy and Lily Gordon. He was one of five boys and, after his father’s early death, was raised by his mother and aunt, Nettie Stewart, in the prairie town of Rosetown, Saskatchewan.
Bill started college at age sixteen. He earned his B.A. and M.A. degrees in chemistry at the University of Saskatchewan and his PhD in physical chemistry at Harvard University. After his graduation from Harvard he married Anne Powell (also from Rosetown). In July 2011 they celebrated their 68th wedding anniversary.
During World War II Bill worked on explosives research at the Oceanographic Institute in Woods Hole, Massachusetts. His first child, Claudia was born in Woods Hole. Bill had always wanted to be a teacher and, after the world, he joined the faculty at the University of Missouri in Columbia. Here his two other children were born: William and Alison.
After five years at the university, the family relocated to Massachusetts where Bill worked for over ten years as a researcher at the Arthur D. Little Company, an industrial research firm. This was a job he really loved and, throughout his life, he continued to work at projects and be an inventor. He held over twenty patents in his name. Everyone in the family also remembers their good years in both Sharon and Winchester.
The family moved again to Bethesda, Maryland and then to Mount Lebanon, Pennsylvania, near Pittsburgh. Bill ended his long career as a university professor of chemistry at Penn State McKeesport Campus.
In 2003, after some years of retirement, Bill and Anne moved to Washington to be near their daughter Claudia and her family. They spent eight years in Bellingham at Merrill Gardens. Very shortly after a planned relocation to Chandler’s Square in Anacortes, Bill took ill and passed away within three weeks. He led a long and healthy life until this last illness and we all miss him.
He was preceded in death by his parents and four brothers. He is survived by his wife Anne and their children: daughter Claudia Pearl and her husband Mike, son William P. Gordon, and daughter Alison Baumann and her husband Bruce. Bill has four grandchildren: Jesse Friebolin, Travis Pearl, Kaili Gordon Rossit, and Joseph Poccia. Kaili and her husband Jeff Rossit becames parents of great grandchild Benjamin Bear Rossit in June of this year.
A family memorial gathering will be arranged at a later date.