Ambrose Lanier Gordon, Sr. was born on May 17, 1914, in Huston, Mississippi, the son of Grant and Darthuis Gordon. When Ambrose was three years old, the family chose to leave the south and moved to Beloit where they became the first residents to occupy an apartment in the Edgewater Fairbanks Morse Apartments (“the Flats”) located on Shore Drive.

In 1920 the Gordon family moved to 2208 Shirland Avenue, acquiring a 10-acre plot of land. Mr. Gordon attended River-view School and graduated from South Beloit High School with the class of 1932. He married Ruth Bolton in 1942 and the marriage produced four children, two sons, James Grant Gordon and Ambrose Lanier Gordon, Jr. and two daughters, Buelah Listenbee and Natalie Hill. Mr.

Gordon and his family later moved to 1835 Sixth Street, where he lived until his death. Mr. Gordon’s work ethics started as a teenager, helping the family grow vegetables on the Gordon’s 10 acres and then peddling them, house to house, with his parents. He worked for two years on the Walsh Farm and then for a year and one-half as a foundry shake-out man at Fairbanks Morse. But then he joined the Beloit Iron Works, where for over 37 years, until his retirement in July of 1976, he worked mainly as a core maker and as one of the many Beloiters whose skills were responsible for the development of Beloit’s industrial reputation.

Ambrose Gordon is remembered as a man who loved life and always had a kind word to greet people. He became a member of New Zion Baptist Church at the age of 13 and would serve his church as a Sunday School teacher and trustee for many years. He worked with the Beloit NAACP branch as a committee member, secretary and as president from 1953 to 1955. He was a Scoutmaster from 1944 to 1949, a member of the South Beloit Board of Education and officer of the BIW Credit Union.

Mr. Gordon’s voluntary services to his community included being a driver for Meals on Wheels and a long-time member of the Beloit Memorial Hospital Volunteer Staff. Ambrose Lanier Gordon served his church and his com-munity, he worked selflessly to insure that the young people of his community received the best education available and the opportunity to reach whatever goals they set for themselves. He left, preserved for posterity, an oral record of his life as an Afro-American member of our community, on tapes that are available at the Beloit Public Library. Mr. Gordon died on August 19, 1992, survived by his wife, four children, eleven grandchildren and five great grandchildren and is interned in Rockton Cemetery, Rockton, Illinois.