GORDY
By: Emily Loker
- Barbara Bretting Non-Fiction Winner
I
don’t remember when or where I met Gordy, most likely because I
have had the pleasure of talking to him so many times. I have watched
from the bus window as his slender frame, adorned with reflective vest
and baseball cap, walks with a full-body limp down Main Street. Gordy
stands about five feet tall, looks like he weighs 100 lbs, and has sunken
cheeks and pocked skin that make his face look like a half pipe made out
of moon rock. He has a gaze that could, to anyone who has never met
or heard of Gordy, seem scheming or malicious. When he looks at you,
he really looks at you. But he doesn’t scare people. I’ve seen children in
strollers wave to him, college students laugh with him, and retirees who
stroll the Main Street like it’s a mall complain to him about the weather. Gordy is a man who walks in and out of our lives, up and down the
streets of Ashland, spreading the joy he feels in his heart.
Gordy is not bashful or private about his past, the source of his
physical and mental disabilities. In fact, he tells many on the first meeting that doctors said he would never walk or talk. Gordy’s mother had a
difficult birth that left him “sideways.” But after enduring close to forty
surgeries in his youth, Gordy proved the doctors wrong. Not only does
he walk, he walks fifteen miles a day every day (except with a -30 wind
chill). Walking and talking are what Gordy does. He walks so that he can
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do his job, which is to make people happy. He even has a business card
that reads, “Gordy’s Main Street Ministry” (which is completely nondenominational). Gordy spreads his Gospel more and better than any
pastor I have ever known. It’s easy to see how simple the most important
things in life are when you see Gordy walking in what looks like three
layers of cotton socks, his tennis shoes, wind pants, and a jacket that easily doubles his size. When I say this man is dedicated to what he does, I’m
not kidding.
When Gordy meets peop