Celebrating LW Centenarians—Happy Birthday Florence Gordon

This is one story in an occasional series profiling some of LW’s most long-lived residents, those who have reached the enviable age of 100 years or more. The series is running in connection with the Golden Age Foundation centenarian event on April 20, which will celebrate these milestones. In most cases, a family member or friend has written the stories.

by Florence Gordon

LW contributor

I was born in North Ireland in 1920 and went to a country school. It was so far to get there by road, I ran through fields, dodging bulls and cows.

I was a cook in the Navy, Army, Air Force Institute for the British Armed Forces. Later, I became a specialist at wiring cars in an auto assembly line, even teaching others how to do it.

I moved to Scotland, where I worked as a head waitress, and later, I moved to Canada, where I worked at all sorts of jobs and studied how to be a hairdresser in school. I did become a beautician and made enough cash at it to move the family to the United States.

That’s where I found a job as a waitress at the Sky Room in Long Beach. I worked there in the evenings and during the day, at John Tillman Co., which still manufactures protective leather clothing for welders and other industrial workers.

My husband, George, worked at Disneyland as a foreman. Both of us became U.S. citizens.

I have lived in Leisure World for so long that I can’t remember the year I came to Mutual 2.

My husband and I have two sons, Ian and George, four grandchildren and a half-dozen great-grandchildren.

My driver’s license is still valid, but I gave up driving my car a year ago.

I am proud to have celebrated my 102nd birthday on March 31.

Florence Gordon with a great-grandbaby.