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Today's Featured Biography
Mark Gordon
In my senior year at LA High School, I was awarded a scholarship to attend the Wharton School of Business of the University of Pennsylvania, "Penn". I drove to Philadelphia with a Penn sophomore (Beverly Hills High graduate). I had never been to Philadelphia before, and found it very different from LA. The summers were stifling; the winters, freezing, very little open space, lots of old brick buildings. But the air quality was so much better than LA's smog at the time that I decided I would try to settle on the east coast once I finished my education, as the LA smog made me very sick (it is somewhat better now than back then, but I am still affected by it when I visit LA!).
The first time it snowed freshman year, all the First Year male students from southern California (about ten of us) frolicked in the snow, some for the first time in their lives. (The womens' dorms were a long walk from the mens' dorms in those days.)
After graduating Wharton, the University of Pennsylvania awarded me a scholarship to attend law school there. I ended up spending seven years in Philadelphia.
After law school, I spent seven+ years in New York City working for two big law firms, one in Wall Street for three years (I hated the location, too claustrophobic for a kid from LA) and the other in midtown for four+ years (great location). I often walked home if I was able to leave the office before 7 pm which was not often enough.
New York (Manhattan) is a great place to live when you are young, but as I got older, I realized how much I was sacrificing in terms of my personal life (working ten hour days plus half of my weekends got a little tiresome after a while).
When I got an offer to head up an investigation at the Federal Trade Commission, Bureau of Consumer Protection, in Washington, I grabbed it. I stayed at the FTC for three years (from 1976-1979), and then moved to General Counsel's Office at the US Environmental Protection Agency, "EPA".
I stayed at EPA for the rest of my legal career, working in General Counsel's Office and later in the Office of the Administrator as a Senior Attorney. Most of my EPA work dealt with water-related issues under the Clean Water Act and the Safe Drinking Water Act. I also served as the legal advisor on EPA's program for the utilization of disadvantaged businesses under its huge grant programs.
I very much enjoyed working on the formulation of national policies affecting the environment and the challenges of being a lawyer under different administrations, always having to be mindful of having to render impartial legal advice, regardless of my own personal views on the issue at hand. Sometimes that was tough to do.
I bought a house in the Dupont Circle/ Logan Circle area of DC (about ten blocks from the White House) almost twenty-six years ago. I became an urban pioneer in a neighborhood of beautiful homes architecturally but which was badly scarred by the 1960's riots. Visiting cousins from LA would inevitably question me on how I could live in such a neighborhood.
Well times have changed. My DC neighborhood is now "yuppie heaven", and even the New York Times refers to it as "fashionable." I am only sorry I did not buy another house there as an investment years ago when it was affordable. Six years ago, I bought a beach condo in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, (FLL), and I have enjoyed going back and forth between DC and FLL.
FLL is a great place to retire -- a laid back, medium sized, city by and large, with a California feel -- very different from Miami which is much more like New York. And there is no smog!! And now, all real estate is on sale!! My condo has great views of both the ocean and the intercoastal waterway. It is a +/- three minutes walk to the beach. I could not have found something comparable in Santa Monica for the price I paid.
I have enjoyed living in DC. It is kind of a cross between NY and LA, (lots of open space) but I am hoping to move permanently to FLL later this year (if I can sell my DC house). I (and 2000 others) were offered early retirement with a buyout five and a half years ago. I took it, and have enjoyed my retirement, lots of travel including six cruises out of Fort Lauderdale. Fort Lauderdale is the cruise capital of the US.
Four years ago at a reception at the Gay Center of the University of Pennsylvania, I met my partner, Aldo Buono, also a Penn graduate (five years after me). Our university years overlapped, but we did not know each other at school.
I was not gay in high school. In my junior year of college, I had an encounter with a fellow student, and that experience changed the course of my life.
I am active in University of Pennsylvania alumni affairs, and have served a number of times on my Class Reunion Gifts Committee. It is my way of paying back for the financial help I was given. It is very expensive to go to Penn today, just like the other Ivy League schools, $50K a year or more. A lot of the money I help raise goes towards scholarship support for undergraduate students.
G-d willing, I plan to attend our fiftieth reunion. My thanks to my high school friend, Dr. Carl Blau, S'61, who took considerable time and effort to track me down. Aside from Mark Nadel, S'61, who lives not far (by LA standards) from my house in DC and with whom I have had lunch several times recently, I have not seen any of you since graduation or a few years thereafter.
I no longer have the thick curly blond hair I used to have. (One of my cousins tried to straighten it -- it fell out in bunches and never grew back properly.) Otherwise, I am about the same weight and am probably recognizable (think very short blond hair!). Obviously, I look older than the young kid I was when many of you knew me.
I look forward to a fun reunion.
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