FReeper Canteen ~ Hall of Heroes: Nathan G Gordon ~ 12 April 2021

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Nathan G. Gordon

Info from this website.

Nathan Green Gordon (September 4, 1916 – September 8, 2008) was an American lawyer, politician, and decorated naval aviator. A Democrat, he served as the Lieutenant Governor of Arkansas for ten terms, from 1947 to 1967. As a United States Navy officer in World War II, he received the U.S. military's highest decoration—the Medal of Honor—for rescuing the crews of several downed airplanes.

Biography

Gordon was born in Morrilton, the seat of Conway County in central Arkansas, to Edward Gordon and the former Ada Ruth Bearden. After graduation from Morrilton public schools, he graduated Columbia Military Academy, Columbia, Tennessee, in 1933 followed by Arkansas Polytechnic College in Russellville. He then attended the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville, graduating with a Juris Doctor degree in 1939.

Gordon practiced law in his hometown of Morrilton before joining the Navy in May 1941. After qualifying as a naval aviator, he was sent to the southwest Pacific Ocean, where he would serve more than two years. By February 15, 1944, he was a lieutenant, junior grade, in command of a PBY Catalina flying boat named the "Arkansas Traveler", part of Patrol Squadron 34 (the Black Cat Squadron). On that day, in the Bismarck Sea off the island of New Ireland, Gordon piloted his aircraft through heavy Japanese fire to rescue the survivors of several downed United States Army planes. He was subsequently promoted to lieutenant and awarded the Medal of Honor for his actions. He served in the Navy until 1945, when he was released to inactive duty.

After the war, Gordon formed a business partnership with his brother, Edward Gordon, Jr., and returned to the practice of law in Morrilton. His political career began in 1946, when he was elected Lieutenant Governor of Arkansas under Governors Benjamin Travis Laney. He took office in January 1947 and was re-elected to nine more two-year terms, finally leaving office in January 1967. During his tenure he served under four different Governors: Laney (1945-1949), Sid McMath (1949-1953), Francis Cherry (1953-1955), and Orval Faubus (1955-1967).

Lieutenant Gordon's official Medal of Honor citation reads:

For extraordinary heroism above and beyond the call of duty as commander of a Catalina patrol plane in rescuing personnel of the U.S. Army 5th Air Force shot down in combat over Kavieng Harbor in the Bismarck Sea, 15 February 1944. On air alert in the vicinity of Vitu Islands, Lt. (then Lt. j.g.) Gordon unhesitatingly responded to a report of the crash and flew boldly into the harbor, defying close-range fire from enemy shore guns to make 3 separate landings in full view of the Japanese and pick up 9 men, several of them injured. With his cumbersome flying boat dangerously overloaded, he made a brilliant takeoff despite heavy swells and almost total absence of wind and set a course for base, only to receive the report of another group stranded in a rubber life raft 600 yards from the enemy shore. Promptly turning back, he again risked his life to set his plane down under direct fire of the heaviest defenses of Kavieng and take aboard 6 more survivors, coolly making his fourth dexterous takeoff with 15 rescued officers and men. By his exceptional daring, personal valor, and incomparable airmanship under most perilous conditions, Lieutenant Gordon prevented certain death or capture of our airmen by the Japanese.

Gordon did not seek reelection in 1966, when the Democratic nominee, James Pilkinton of Hope, narrowly lost the general election to Maurice L. Britt, the first Republican to hold the state's second highest office since Reconstruction. Like Gordon, Britt was also a military hero.

More on Nathan Gordon's heroics here.

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