Irresistible Grace

Remembering a friend I want you to meet

I find it amazing that it’s been a decade now since the death of my best friend Gordon Anderson Sterling, who died of complications from Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy at the surprisingly advanced age of 51 on January 19, 2015. There’s not a day that goes by when I don’t think of the person I called my best friend, though one of the humbling things I realized at his memorial service is how many people thought of him exactly the same way. In commemorating him by reproducing this eulogy, I’m hoping your own world will be enlarged by an encounter with this remarkable man. His memory is a blessing. —Jim

“It seems I have a bit of a cold,” Gordon said. This was a typical Gordo understatement. It was April of 1985. Gordon was in the second semester of his senior year at Tufts, and was, once again, deeply behind on his work. It may amuse some of you to know that Gordon was not a great student. He was a chronic procrastinator when it came to homework, and had what I, a scholarship boy who simply didn’t know any better than to study as if my life depended on it, a stunning indifference to the state of his transcript.

Gordon was a little unusual in other ways, too. One reason why he was never terribly interested in the state of his academic life—and here I must distinguish that from a great intellectual curiosity—is that he had already accomplished the most obvious things that a college degree was for. He had already written software that was in the marketplace and for which he was collecting royalties. He had already secured a job as an engineer at Analog Devices. He had already bought a brand-new house that had been built to his specifications. The class I remember him being most passionate about was one on children’s literature, because it was so unfamiliar to him.

Some of Gordon’s more subtle accomplishments were easier to overlook because he seemed to accomplish them so effortlessly. One was making it to college in the first place. These were the days before the Americans with Disabilities Act. It is a credit to Tufts that the university accepted him and immediately implemented a series of structural changes to facilitate his experience there.

Gordon’s handicap was the first thing you noticed about him. In an important sense, it was also the first thing you forgot. He simply radiated competence and goodwill. Gordon ran a small economy from his dorm room, hiring undergraduates, many of them occupational therapy students, to assist him. He had a van he could drive himself; he buzzed around campus, often alone, in his electric wheelchair. He was the very embodiment of the hail fellow well-met, ready to banter with peers, professors, maintenance workers, dining hall staff. Let me tell you, accompanying him on a routine errand could be an exasperating experience.

Gordon savored opportunities to take on tasks by himself. As his graduation neared he fixed his gaze on a big one: an overseas trip to Scandinavia. Poor Judy Sterling was appalled by the risks (it was only later, of course, that I could fully appreciate her horror; at the time I was thrilled he was taking Tom Camp, Joe Callahan, and me along to assist him). I remember being struck with a sense of wonder that Gordon and Judy, two people who so clearly vibrated on the same string, could nevertheless disagree so emphatically. But Gordon had a mind of his own. He loved his mother. And he was going.

And then he got a bit of a cold. Except it wasn’t a cold—it was pneumonia. And it got really, really bad. Once again, Gordon was introducing his clueless friend to something new, and this time it was the prospect of death. I remember spending a difficult night in the gleaming emptiness of 4 Naugatuck Drive, simply dumbfounded that we could be in this situation. And maybe for the first time in my life, I really did mean “we,” and by that I don’t just mean Gordon and me. I was also thinking of Judy and Graham [dad]. Graham, who may be the most intimidating man I ever met. And yet one whose love for—not just love of, but palpable joy in—his son embodied the proposition that people are complicated.

Gordon recovered. The price of his survival was high: a lifelong attachment to a ventilator; decreased mobility, a puncturing of presumed vitality. But—and this is really one point of my remarks here today—Gordon began a second life, a life where I believe the majority of the people in this room first encountered him. It is simply breathtaking to consider the breadth and depth of his impact. The series of children and families that inhabited the home he built for himself, his friends, their children, and then [brother] Arlie and [sister-in-law] Josie and their family. The nurses he provided livelihoods. The colleagues with whom he collaborated on innumerable projects across the globe from 4 Fruit St. and from Norwood. The niece and nephews, among them another Gordon, whom he accompanied to adulthood. [Nurses] Lisa, Mary, Jennifer, Patricia, and others of you whose relationships with Gordon I can never fully comprehend: You never would have known him. [Sister] Ellen: I can still see the crystalline tear you shed in that emergency room reception area thirty years ago. But he stayed with you then. And in some important sense, he is with you still.

Shortly after Gordon died, my sister sent me a Hallmark sympathy card. In the margins, she wrote, “I truly believe you made a difference in Gordon’s life.” I stared at that card a little stunned: until that moment, it had never occurred to me that I had made a difference in Gordon’s life. All I’ve ever really focused on is what a difference he’s made in mine. But as I reflected upon her message, I began to realize that in thinking about our relationship in such terms, I shortchanged him—I failed to fully absorb the reality that he savored the company of other lives as much as we savored his. And so it is I say to you, my friends, thank you for the difference you made in Gordon’s life. He was a man deprived of things that many of us take for granted. But whether because, despite, or independently of that fact, he was a man who understood the meaning of happiness, which he had the good sense to seize with both hands when it came his way. And you provided him with a steady supply of it.

As some of you know, I am a historian by trade. That’s why I am experiencing a thrill to stand in this church, as I have on a number of other Sterling occasions, which was founded by the Puritans in 1630. I don’t believe the Sterling or Anderson families are old New England stock; in this respect, you might say, they are immigrants, immigrants who, like many immigrants, have assimilated what I regard as a New England ethos that includes a kind of can-do spirit, a focused intelligence and pragmatism that I consider Gordon’s essence. But theologically speaking, the Puritans were Calvinists, which is to say that salvation was not something that could be acquired or willed into existence. It was instead a gift that was in the sole province of God, which he conferred as he saw fit in ways inscrutable to mere mortals. The Puritans had a specific term to describe when this happened: they called it “irresistible grace.” I must say I’m rather taken by this phrase. It seems like such an apt way to describe the role of Gordon Anderson Sterling in our lives. Irresistible grace: a miracle. How lucky we are to bear witness to it.

Jim Cullen

April 4, 2015