Bar & Bat Mitzvah PLANNING GUIDE PAGES 1B - 16B
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100 & counting Gloria Gordon just became a centenarian — but she had much more important things on her mind than her birthday BY JEANNETTE COOPERMAN
This story was commissioned by the River City Journalism Fund.
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f a director were filming a documentary about Gloria Gordon for her 100th birthday, they might start with her first job: organizing, at 22, a standing-room-only rally for President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, which led to a second job that captured the interest of Eleanor Roosevelt. Or they might skip ahead to show Gordon in the 1960s, coordinating the now-famous Baby Tooth Survey, which gathered literal proof of radioactivity entering children’s bodies after aboveground tests of nuclear weapons. Or
Gloria Gordon celebrated her 100th birthday on Aug. 4, but she has much more on her mind than parties. PHOTO: VIRGINIA HAROLD skip way ahead to show her, at age 89, starting a new nonprofit to help older adults. A chauvinistic director might make the mistake of spotlighting her husband of 30 years, Barry Commoner. Sure, he ran for U.S. president, and TIME magazine tagged him “the Paul Revere of ecology.” But “Gloria was a person in her own right, to put it mildly,” says Ben Senturia, who studied under Commoner and later worked as an activist alongside Gordon. How would she start her life story? She wouldn’t make the documentary in the first place. She is unusually self-dismissive. Not in the coy way that begs for contradiction, but because
she wants all eyes on the issues, and no individual can tackle them alone. But if forced, she would probably start with her pony. She was 8 years old, and the only time she’d ridden a pony was at a county fair, carefully lifted into the saddle and led around a circle. But now her dad had bought her Poppy, a pony of her own. The farmer who was stabling Poppy gave no lessons, just pointed little Gloria toward the paddock. When the pony threw her into a pile of snow and galloped back alone, the farmer said, “You get back on that pony and show her who’s boss.” And so she did, and from then on, she and Poppy had no problems. They took the bridle paths through the woods, Gloria
loving the freedom of being out there all by herself, the respectful nods from other riders as they passed. Already, she was learning to navigate the world.
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cyclone of energy — what decides which direction it will blow? Gordon’s first influence was her grandparents, Lithuanian Jews who fled to New York to escape persecution under the Russian tsar. From one grandfather, Gordon drew a love of nature; from the other, her abiding sense of humor. And from her mother’s mother, she received pure affection. See 100 AND COUNTING on page 12A
INSIDE THIS ISSUE
Jewish Federation’s vice chair of development on importance of Annual Campaign PAGE 4A
Mid-Missouri mikvah: Coming soon to Columbia, Mo. PAGE 6A
Mitzvah match: Who do you recognize from their bar/bat mitzvah photo? PAGE 8B-9B