An Anecdote from the
records of Dr. Gordon’s family.

Dr Antonio Maria de Gordon y Acosta was born in Havana, Cuba on September 18, 1848. He was the first Gordon to be born in the island of Cuba. His father, Antonio Maria de Gordon y Gutiérrez arrived in Cuba after having migrated to Cartagena de Indias, Colombia with his father Manuel de Gordon y Monasterio in the early XIX Century. Spanish proper names include two last names, the first one for the father and the second one for the mother's first last name.

The two last names are often divided by the letter “y” which means and in English. Therefore, these lengthy names provide a genealogy that is important in tracing families and history.

The Gordon’s were one of the Catholic families with Scottish surnames that emigrated from Scotland to Spain during the religious wars that embattled the kingdom in the XIII and XIV Centuries. The other Catholic families that migrated to Spain were the Domecq's, and the Osborne. The best known of these families settled in Jerez, Spain and became involved in the business of Cognac.
 
The family records of Dr. Gordon’s family have Manuel de Gordon y Monasterio in Cartagena around 1805. He worked for the Spanish government.

His son went to Havana alone as far as we know. There, he settled and became a business man. In the course of the years, he married a Cuban girl, María del Carmen Acosta y Morejón. She is said to have belonged to a Spanish family that had been in Cuba for generations and were settled in Havana since the initial distribution of land by the Spanish Crown in the early 1500’s. Her brother of Maria del Carmen Acosta was known to be an "Adelantado" in the Spanish Royal Fleet that covered the territory of Cuba and Florida in the 1500's.

The couple had two children, Antonio María and María del Carmen. While still very young, Antonio Gordon lost his father to tuberculosis. His mother, now a young widow, departed to Cadiz, Spain by sea with her two children. It is believed that the she was taking the children to Spain in order to provide them with better opportunities in the Spanish schools of the time. Indeed, the children were matriculated in a school in Cadiz but soon thereafter their mother died there. Both children became orphans.

The children were returned to Havana by sea in a long and lonesome voyage.
The Atlantic Ocean probably felt like eternity to the youngsters. They were going back to Cuba to be in the care of Don Secundino Bermúdez and the Poey family. It is believed that both of these families were close to the Gordon couple when they lived in Havana.

The young Gordon went to school in Havana at the Colegio San Salvador.
Gordon was an excellent student since his days in San Salvador. Many years later he remembered his feelings and confided with Maria Isabel Gordon, his granddaughter, that he felt saddened despite having good grades and awards because he did not have parents with whom to share his awards and merits.
These are notes that left by Maria Isabel Gordon y Etchegoyen, a granddaughter of Gordon born in Havana on April 22, 1902. She died on June 12, 1994 in exile in Texas and is buried in Miami.

Gordon became a physician and married María del Carmen Bermúdez in 1869.
The couple had two children, Antonio Maria and Ramon Maria. She was the sister of two of the students that were enrolled in the first year of medical school in Havana in the Fall of 1871. At that time, Maria del Carmen Bermudez was pregnant with Ramon Maria who was to be born in 1872.

As some of you probably know, the above mentioned medical class became known in Cuba and throughout Hispanic America because eight of the students were killed by firing squad instigated by a Spanish mob while the acting Governor of the island did nothing to prevent the “lynching.” Anacleto Bermúdez y González de la Piñera was killed and his brother Esteban Bermúdez y González de la Piñera was placed in jail with most of the students in that class. A few of the students were spared their life and jail sentences through the efforts of diplomats from the United States and the Spanish military. Esteban was to be sent into exile to Spain in May 1872 but by then he was suffering from tuberculosis. He was destined to an institution in Ceuta in Northern Africa. Years later he returned to Havana and died in 1892.

Maria del Carmen Bermudez died while still young. Later, Gordon married María Josefa Huguet. They had no children.
 
Gordon joined the University of Havana while very young and served it its faculty as can be seen in his professional history. He was also very active in many scientific and professional societies in Cuba and abroad. He served as President of the Havana Academy of Sciences in the 1890’s.

He is well remembered as the founder of the “Dispensarios Para Ninos Pobres” during the Cuban Independence War of 1895. By 1899 there were more than 10 dispensaries where poor and abandoned children were taken care of from the medical standpoint. Gordon not only served in many of these institutions but also helped with the expenses of these centers. It is not surprising then that when the University Hospital of the University of Havana, The Calixto Garcia Hospital, was expanded after the institution of the Cuban Republic; a pavilion was named after Gordon.

He was removed from the University, which he loved because of a flawed logic in the context of political issues. He then quietly became a private physician but continued to participate and contribute to various professional and scientific groups including the Havana Academy of Sciences. His son, Dr. Antonio Maria de Gordon y Bermudez, also a physician in the medical faculty at Havana resigned his post when his father was treated unfairly by the new order brought on by the American intervention.

Those were times of change and the first American intervention was no exception.
On February 8th, 1917, while leaving his house on the "Calzada del Cerro"
in Havana he looked back to his wife and told her: "Me muero de una angina de pecho." His funeral took place on the 9th and according to his grandson, Antonio Ma. Gordon y Osorio, it was a grandiose display of sorrow with a great multitude of relatives, friends, patients, and colleagues. The casket was pulled by a horse carriage all decorated in black.

For what is remembered about his professional life, the reader may wish to link to his professional history.

More on the life of the Dr Antonio Gordon:

http://www.finlay-online.com/nicolasgutierrez/Dr.AntonioM.deGordon.htm

 

Photograph taken sometime in 1914-15 in the back porch of Dr. Gordon y Acosta's house in the Calzada del Cerro in Havana.

Dr. Antonio de Gordon y Acosta
1848-1917

Dr. Antronio M. Gordon y Bermúdez (1870-1922)
 

El alumno de medicina
Antonio M. Gordon en el Hospital Militar de Columbia en la Habana
alrededor del año 1930

Dr,. Antonio Gordon, Sr. (arow) appears in this 1940 ophotograph with a group of the alumni association of the Marist Brothers School in Havana at La Víbora neighborhood.
 

Dr. Antonio María Gordon y Osorio
1910-1991
 

María Isabel Gordon y Etchegoyen
y el Dr. Ramón de Gordon y Osorio
a su derecha


Photograph that appeared in the Euclid General Hospital newpaper, The Tongue Blade, in 1963. Dr. Antonio Gordon, Sr appears at one of the bedsides while his son, Tony Gordon, served as orderly in the ER. The epidemic was identified as staphylococcal food posoning affecting about 100 high school students

Copy of a page from the Plain Dealer in Cleveland, Ohio reporting on the arrival of 9 Cuban doctors for internship at Euclid General Hospital. Dr. Antonio Gordon, Sr. was among them.
 

Dr. Antonio Gordon, Jr., serving in the US Naval Reserve in Guantánamo Bay Naval Hospital, 1985.


Dr. Antonio Gordon, Jr. orients pre-meds in various issues on the medical profession at Florida International University.

Dr. Antonio Gordon, Jr. observes session with FIU pre-meds who elected to undergo a CPR course sponsored by the Finlay Society and Hialeah Hospital.

"Dr. Antonio M. Gordon Jr, in AIDS conference at the University of Miami."