Leonard H.D. Gordon's Obituary
Leonard H. D. Gordon, age 91, died on October 17, 2019 in
Tucson, Arizona. Professor Gordon was born in New York City on August 8, 1928. He developed an early interest in the humanities that led to his later career. In 1946, after his graduation from De Witt Clinton High School in New York, he began to study journalism at Indiana University. However, he soon opted to pursue a career in history with a focus on the modern diplomatic history of China. During his college years at Indiana University, he met Marjorie J. Hunt of Elkhart, Indiana; they married in 1951.
After receiving his B.A. (1950) and M.A. (1953) degrees from Indiana University, Gordon entered the U.S. Army where he continued to pursue his interest in East Asia by attending the Chinese language program at the U.S. Army Language School in Monterey, California. Shortly after the Korean War, he served in Army Intelligence in Tokyo, Japan where his first son, Herman, was born.
Immediately following his period of military service, Gordon began his doctoral studies in 1956 in Modern Chinese History at the University of Michigan. He soon received a grant to study Chinese at Yale University and Taiwan Normal University that enabled him to conduct research in Taipei, Taiwan (1958-59). He subsequently acquired a Fulbright Grant to continue his research in Tokyo (1959-60).
Upon completing his doctoral studies in 1961, Gordon served as the East Asian Historian in the Historical Office of the U.S. Department of State in Washington, D.C. (1961-63). Next, he accepted an appointment to the Department of History at the University of Wisconsin where his second son, David, was born. Four years later, he joined the History faculty at Purdue University in West Lafayette, Indiana. He was Purdue’s first specialist in the East Asian field and, as the school’s history and language programs developed, he became the first Chair of its Asian Studies Program. He retired in 1994 as Professor Emeritus of Chinese History after teaching at Purdue for 27 years.
During his academic career, Gordon authored and/or edited seven books in his field and published numerous journal articles and book reviews. His books included Taiwan: Studies in Chinese Local History (editor; Columbia University Press, 1970); All Under Heaven: Sun Yat-sen and His Revolutionary Thought (co-authored with Sidney H. Chang; Hoover Institution Press, 1991); and Confrontation over Taiwan: Nineteenth Century China and the Powers (Lexington Books, 2007). He also self-published a novel shortly before his passing titled The Rose and the Peony (AuthorHouse, 2019).
Gordon is survived by son Herman, Associate Professor of Neurobiology at the University of Arizona Medical School, daughter-in-law Dr. Anne Pollack, granddaughter Jasmine and grandson Graham in Tucson, Arizona; along with son David, Professor of Asian History at Shepherd University and daughter-in-law Xiaoqin Lu in Martinsburg, West Virginia.
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