Remembering James Leonard Gordon, Sr.

Remembering James Leonard Gordon, Sr.

On the occasion of his 50th Death Anniversary

 

JAMES L. GORDON has been largely regarded to have delivered his fellow Filipinos from the shackles of American military regime on to freedom and self-governance. He delivered the people of Olongapo from their fears and wrong perception of liberty. He arrived at a time when his bravery and vision were needed the most.

Yes, he stood out from the Filipinos of his time and generations yet to come. He chose Filipino citizenship when most of his countrymen (true blooded Filipinos) were lining up to obtain U.S. visas, seeking to leave their homeland and loved ones behind for the proverbial greener pasture.

His story unfolds as a little community in Zambales province struggled to assert its own identity in a unique setup brought upon by an oversight of Philippine officials amid our American benefactors’ intensifying presence, in their eager rush to please them.

Few probably knew that it was James Gordon who raised the contentious issue of American military presence in the country.

It all goes back in 1947 when Olongapo was included in a tract of land leased to the U.S. as a military naval reservation. It was a Philippine territory governed by American navy authorities where Filipinos were deprived of free movement and right of abode, among others. In this setup emerged a most unlikely patriot and nationalist, James L. Gordon. Born to an American father who chose the Filipino citizenship of his mother, Gordon led the outcry for emancipation from the clutches of foreign rule.

As the nation rejoiced when Olongapo finally secured its independence via the turn over of Olongapo by the US government to Philippine sovereignty on December 7, 1959, Gordon initially found himself the odd man out. Politics, murky politics and selfish ambitions, threatened to snatch everything away. The grim reality that everything has a price, even a much deserved liberty, came to the fore more abruptly than expected.

In one fell swoop, the newly created municipality’s resources were pillaged by opportunists—greedy politicians and underworld characters, who were just waiting in the wings for the bonanza.
Olongapo was on to a perilous start. Good and evil stood face to face. Yet the people who, for 13 long years, yearned for an independent and prosperous community sided with the good and voted for upright governance under the stewardship of James Gordon.

But the road was fraught with dangers. Every step of the way, Mayor James Gordon faced obstacle after obstacle laid by people whose wicked obsession was to thwart his objective of building a peaceful, orderly and prosperous Olongapo. Yet he never gave up and forged ahead with the good fight.

And James Gordon paid a dear price — his life. The path ahead after his untimely death was clouded in haze, albeit briefly. The assassin’s bullet may have drawn out Jimmy’s last breath but it sowed the seeds of new beginnings. His widow, Amelia, took up the cudgels from her fallen husband and from a new beginning son; Dick Gordon propelled his father’s vision to greater heights.

History would be repeated again decades later with the pullout of American troops from Subic naval base in November 1992. Dick Gordon faced a scenario akin to that of his father as Olongapo reeled on the brink of another chaotic chapter in its history. Like his father before him, the son and his vision prevailed and heralded a new dawn for the people of Olongapo.

Leaders and heroes are born every minute but not everyone gets to play the role. It takes a pivotal event or setting, along with the courage and grit to stand up and make a difference for oneself and for others. Leaders and heroes are dreamers and therefore risk-takers. Leaders and heroes are not measured by how they died but why. They are extolled because of what they made out of life and not by the circumstance of their death.

James Leonard T. Gordon was a dreamer who stood in the crossroads and took the right path. He did what Robert Frost aptly put forth in his poem, The Road Not Taken, “Two roads diverged in a yellow wood but — I took the one less traveled by and that has made all the difference.”

He walked tall amidst the travails, saw life as it should be and never wavered in his purpose. He set the paradigm of what leaders ought to be.