Eulogy for Hymie Gordon

It is a curious circumstance that I, the son of Christian parents, often think of a passage from The Koran when I think of Hymie Gordon, the son of a rabbi. The passage is this:

They shall question you concerning what they should expend. Say "The abundance!"

Hymie had an abundance undreamt of by most other men, and he spent it with exhilarating joy and generosity of spirit. Even his name held unsuspected riches.

Names sometimes encode remarkable historical information. It is well known that the name "Pluto" was given to the ninth planet because of its mythological appropriateness. Less well known is the fact that astronomers at the Lowell Observatory chose the name because its first two letters, "PL," are the initials of Percival Lowell, who played a central role in the search for the ninth planet.

You may have wondered how it came about that Hymie Gordon, a man of such aristocratic, even regal, bearing, was given the name, "Hymie," which sounds like a nickname. I never discussed the matter with him, but I think I know how it happened.

The name "Hymie" sounds like a nickname because it is a nickname, a diminutive of the Hebrew "Chaim," which means life. Before the first World War, when Lithuania was a territory of Russia, there was a law forbidding Jewish parents from giving their children full Biblical names. A family that wanted to name a son "Abraham" was forced to use a truncated version like "Abram." Parents who wanted to name a son "Chaim" had to use the diminutive "Hymie."

When Hymie Gordon was born in South Africa, his parents were free to give him any name they chose. I am convinced that they chose the name of a beloved departed family member who had been born in territory under the repressive Russian regime. If this is true, Hymie's name, like a tapestry containing a hidden figure, recalls both the repression under which his ancestors lived and the love and family loyalty by which his own family triumphed over that repression.

Quite apart from its historical and familial meanings, the name "Hymie" is stunningly appropriate for our dear friend. Life indeed! I have been blessed in my friendships, but I have never had a friend who lived more vibrantly and joyously than Hymie Gordon. Nor have I ever known a man who defended and cherished innocent human life more passionately and powerfully.

Nearly two decades ago, when he and I spoke on medical ethics at the then fledgling Mayo Medical School, a student asked Hymie Gordon a question about a topic already on its way to fashionability: death and dying. Hymie replied: "I am not interested in death. I do not study death. I am a doctor. I study life. My subject is life!" On the topic of living wills Hymie Gordon said: "We have no need for living wills. What we need is the will to live!" Concerning the prevalent use of the dehumanizing technical term "fetus" in current abortion debates he said: "I have been practicing medicine for more than forty years and have delivered babies on three continents and never once has a woman said to me 'Doctor, how is my fetus doing?'."

Hymie Gordon was appalled by the movement to enlist physicians in the deliberate destruction of human beings through abortion and euthanasia. With Professor Elizabeth Anscombe and me, he founded the Program in Human Rights and Medicine at the University of Minnesota, a program dedicated to the serious study of problems in medical ethics and to the free exchange of ideas concerning their solution. Over the past seven-and-a-half years, along with several of us in the room, he gave thousands of hours of his time to the Program.

A scrupulous attachment to fairness and the ideals of a university informed all his work in the Program and was conspicuously in evidence during the very last seminar over which he presided, just weeks before his death. The seminar was a presentation on assisted reproduction by a physician whose views on medical ethics were diametrically opposed to his own. So opposed that this physician casually referred to the selective aborting of multiple embryos as "dinking a pregnancy." Our aim that day was to learn the valuable clinical information the distinguished physician had to impart. Hymie Gordon uttered not a word in criticism of the cavalier references to abortion and treated our guest with cordial courtesy.

Henri Cartier-Bresson once wrote:

Photographing means recognizing in a single instant, a split second, both a fact, and the precise organization of visually perceived forms that embodies that fact. It means putting head, eye, and heart in one line of sight.

That was Hymie Gordon exactly. Head, eye and heart in one line of sight. A superlative speaker sought after by universities, learned societies, and pro-life groups, he lectured at major centers of learning all over the planet. And his range of topics was as far flung as the venues at which he spoke. It was a dazzling experience to witness the orderly and rapid-fire marshaling of arguments by a mind whose store of knowledge ranged from Biblical archaeology to molecular biology. Bold, original, deeply learned, supremely self-confident, at times sharply polemical, always fresh and stimulating. Whether he was discussing the practices of the ancient Asclepiades or the Human Genome Project, his laser focus was the true Hippocratic end of medicine, the care and cherishing and protection of human life. Head, eye, and heart in one line of sight.

Brisk, daring, precise in utterance, dazzlingly articulate, possessed of a devilish wit, always elegantly attired, gracious, indeed, courtly in manner, always generous of heart, Hymie Gordon showered us with more gifts than we can easily recount. For example, after today, who at the Mayo Clinic will be able to name a new disease or coin some new scientific terminology without an uneasy sense of having perhaps committed a linguistic transgression which Hymie would have swiftly and cheerfully put right? Without hearing him say: "This is a barbarism! You're joining a Latin stem with a Greek suffix!"

A final word about our dear friend. He lectured as you all know with unparalleled and enthralling virtuosity. A small but significant episode illustrates the secret of his power as a lecturer and as a human being. A year ago, he delivered here a lecture that had been part of the magnificent, three-year, sixty-lecture cycle on medicine in history he had given at the Mayo Clinic. As anyone who heard the lecture on "Beethoven and Medical Practice in 19th Century Vienna" knows, it was powerful and profoundly moving. When he concluded, his audience of hundreds, which included scores of physicians, jumped up and delivered a thunderous ovation. Tears were streaming down the cheeks of more than a few people. A huge portrait of Beethoven was projected on the screen. Beethoven's majestic music could barely be heard over the thunderous applause. And Hymie Gordon stood with his back to the audience and applauded the enormous image of Beethoven. This was not a theatrical gesture. It told of the real power of his lectures. His wit, his astonishing verbal dexterity, his rapid-fire command of logic and fact, his capacity to instruct and amuse and delight were all subordinated to his subject. For Hymie Gordon, the subject, whether Beethoven's music or the structure of DNA, was the star.

Our dear friend, who carried so much of human civilization in his own person now rests in the ancient city of Jerusalem, which has been the vessel of so much of the spiritual grace of human civilization. The man who was a living embodiment of the consecration of learning now rests in one of the ancient centers of learning and wisdom. If he could give us counsel in our present grief he might borrow a poet's words and say that more important than the fact that our hearts are broken is the fact that we have hearts. He might teach us that the scars about to form on our hearts will speak of more than the painful wound we now suffer: they will attest to the power that heals our hearts, the power to which our beloved friend and brother, whose very name means life, devoted his entire life and soul.

- John M Dolan