Rare Family Photos: Gordon for good and old reasons

I didn't like my first name as a child and, while playing on the front porch of our house in Burgessville, Ontario as a five- or six-year old, I asked my mother to give me a new one.

[My mother tried "to explain the importance of 'Gordon.'"]

Instead of immediately doing as I asked - I likely preferred Mighty Mouse - she attempted to explain the importance of 'Gordon.' I can't remember much about the discussion that followed but I do know mother's reasoning won the day and I still carry the name I was given at birth - and like it a lot better now.

Besides the name linking me to a great-grandmother, on my mother's side, who lived to the age of 104 or 105, it connects me to my father, Gordon Douglas (Doug) Harrison. I now wouldn't trade it for any other name.

["Until she died in the mid-1950s, Lydia Jane Gordon lived

with her daughter, Ida Belle Gordon in Norwich"]

 
If Lydia's longevity and my dad's tenacity are combined within me I should live to 120.

Where will you be in 58 years?!

[Photos of photo by G.Harrison]

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