Gordon E. Medlock

Gordon E. Medlock, 93, of Granger, IN died May 11, 2017.

Gordon was born June 4, 1923 in Atchison, Kansas to Charles and Ina (Gordon) Medlock. He married Barbara Puls on September 15, 1944, who preceded him in death, as did a daughter, Christine Medlock Daggett, and a grandson, Charles Krieger Medlock.

He is survived by two sons, Gordon E. (Stephanie) Medlock, Jr. of La Porte, IN and Charles P. “Chuck” (Lynne) Medlock of Goshen, IN; and one daughter, Trudi Foreman (Jeff Aldred) of Boulder, CO.

He is also survived by ten grandchildren, Alanna Medlock, Gabe Foreman (Rhea), Alexis (Megan) Foreman, Matthew (Cara) Daggett, Jamie (Neeley) Daggett, Lauren Daggett (Arni) Kroknes, Megan Medlock (Ryan) LaPelle, Morgan Medlock (Grant) Gibson, Christopher Medlock and Michael Medlock; as well as eleven great grandchildren, Lily Rae Foreman, Naiya Grace Foreman, Alexi Foreman, Henry Gordon Daggett, Gabriel Daggett, Nonie Daggett, Kai Daggett, Zadie Lou Daggett, Hekla-Ren Kroknes, Gabriella Gibson and Theodore Edward Gibson.  He had two brothers; one preceded him in death - Charles (Mary Beth) Medlock of Bartlesville, OK, and another - Paul (Claudia) Medlock an RV Knight of the Road, now with a permanent home in Gold Canyon, Arizona.

Gordon graduated from Atchison High School, Atchison, Kansas in 1941 and attended Park College in Parkville, Missouri and Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois. He graduated from Northwestern in 1946 with a B.S. in Business Administration. He spent 1943 to 1946 in the United States Navy, ending his service as an officer with duty on the Minesweeper USS Lucid in the South Atlantic, and later as a training ship sailing out of Miami, Florida, and was given an honorable discharge in February 1946 after World War II ended.

He had a variety of jobs beginning in high school, where he was a radio announcer, service station attendant, hotel clerk, photographer’s assistant, newspaper carrier and Fuller Brush Salesman. Upon graduation from Northwestern, he spent a short time as a junior accountant doing audits with the accounting firm of Haskins & Sells before joining Stearns Magnetic Mfg. in Milwaukee, WI as their Sales Manager from 1947 to 1953. He then became a Major Account Sales Representative with the Dole Valve Company, operating from Chicago and Morton Grove while living in Arlington Heights, IL.

He moved to the South Bend area in 1956 as a Regional Manager with the Wheelabrator Corp. of Mishawaka, IN in a newly created Abrasive Division, and four years later was made manager of a division called LORCO, when the Lord Chemical Company was acquired by Wheelabrator.

In January of 1970, he joined the South Bend, IN office of Bache, Halsey Stuart, serving a large client base of individuals, corporations and the retirement funds of State of Indiana Public Employees and the Indiana State Teachers Association. He made two moves, first to become the South Bend Manager for a regional brokerage firm, Traub & Co., and a few years later to open a South Bend office for Raffensperger & Hughes – an Indianapolis brokerage firm.

He managed the underwriting of many municipal bond issues for South Bend, IN and some surrounding cities including General Obligation issues, Industrial Revenue issues, and Hospital Bond issues throughout the state and Section 8 & 23 Housing Bonds throughout the Middle West, and also did mergers and acquisitions and took several companies public, including Biomet, Inc. He financed many Midwestern companies, retirement homes and hospitals with tax exempt bond issues and became part owner of many of them including the Karl King Tower in South Bend. In all, he did more than $100 million in financings of one type or another.

He became involved in mergers and acquisitions and had a series of corporate experiences that got him involved with listings on the American Stock Exchange in New York and the Vancouver Stock Exchange in Canada. He helped a client acquire the Enterprise Oil Company of Detroit, Michigan – a private company. He then took the company public and garnered a nationwide shareholder base. His client, Robert Gow, asked Gordon to become his Executive Vice President, so he took a leave of absence from the brokerage business and became full time in running the oil business, and started several new companies as joint ventures and subsidiaries of Enterprise Oil.

In the 1980’s, he was contacted by a company in Raleigh-Durham North Carolina and asked to join their board of directors and to head up a telephone operation of theirs, and was later commissioned to start a new company to do video conferencing. Here he headed a national sales organization auditing telephone contracts of major corporations and introducing cost saving programs. This led to two exciting events. First, the company was asked to put a bank of telephones in the desert near Riyadh, Saudi Arabia during the 1st Iraq war so the troops could call home. This generated more than $1,000,000 a month in income, which impressed the board of directors, who were also shareholders. So, after the war, the board asked him to find a business that would generate recurring income like the phone business.

So, he found a perfect answer in video conferencing, and located a small company in Vancouver, Canada that had a working video conferencing program, and acquired it and took it public, and listed it on the Vancouver Stock Exchange. It was a very attractive company and became widely traded in the Over the Counter market in the US. This company grew and supplied video conferencing equipment to a lot of major US companies and had its system adopted by the US Military, where it did video conferencing with the Pentagon and many service branches in the US and around the world.

After a working career of 55 years, Gordon retired and began playing serious duplicate bridge. He joined the South Bend and Ft. Wayne Bridge Clubs and played as much as five times a week, and in addition went to bridge tournaments throughout the Midwest. He achieved the level of Bronze Life Master.

Gordon also was a serious golfer and a member of Inverness Country Club Northwest in Chicago, Morris Park Country Club in South Bend and the Maxwelton Golf Course in Syracuse, Indiana, and later as a member, he served a term as president at Tippecanoe Lake Country Club in Leesburg, IN. He also became active at Juday Creek Golf Course when he and his wife moved to Granger, IN. He shot a score of 88 – one better than his age in 2012 at Juday Creek Golf Course. While at Tippecanoe Lake C.C., he won the club championship in his flight and a green jacket as a winner in the annual member/guest invitational.

After living in South Bend in Twyckenham Hills for 20 years, in 1976 he and wife Barbara moved to Lake Wawasee for 32 years, where they lived on the North Shore near the Eli Lily Estate, and became active boaters – racing Lightning Class sail boats at the Wawasee Yacht Club every summer Sunday, and in regattas all around the US. His sailing interest took him to larger sailboats on Lake Michigan, where he sailed in 20 consecutive Chicago Mackinac races including four years on the 12 Meter Yacht, Northern Light, which was a “trial horse” in the preparations for the 1957 Americas Cup.

The sailing bug went further with the acquisition of a 54-foot Ketch, which he sailed in the Caribbean from the Bahamas to Grenada for a period of ten years.

He had an active church life beginning with his baptism and church membership in the First Presbyterian Church in Atchison, Kansas. For a brief time, he was a member of the First Presbyterian Church of Chicago and the Immanuel Presbyterian Church of Milwaukee, WI before becoming one of the founders of the North Shore Congregational Church in Fox Point, WI, a suburb of Milwaukee. He attended the First Presbyterian Church in Arlington Heights, IL before moving to South Bend, IN, where he joined the First Presbyterian Church of South Bend and became an Usher, a Deacon and then an Elder.

Friends may visit with the Medlock family from 10:00 am unto 12:00 noon on Monday, May 15, 2017 in the Palmer Funeral Home – Hickey Chapel, 17131 Cleveland Road, South Bend. Gordon will be cremated in accordance with his wishes and buried next to his wife, Barbara, in her family plot in the Forest Home Cemetery in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

Gordon led a good life and wanted his obituary to include the following message to his family and friends:

DO NOT GRIEVE FOR ME:

I am now with Barbara and happy to be with her again.

I have had a good life – a great family, one to be really proud of, and many, many wonderful friends – and accomplishments beyond my fondest dreams – so I am happy to go to be with my lovely wife, Barbara – my wonderful daughter, Christine and a great brother, Charles Lee in their Heavenly Abode.

I’m Free – Don’t grieve for me, for now I’m free.

I’m following the path God laid for me.

I took his hand when I heard him call.

I turned my back and left it all.

I could not stay another day to laugh, to love, to work or play.

Tasks left undone must stay that way.

I found that place at the close of day.

If my parting has left a void,

Then fill it with remembered joy.

A friendship shared, a laugh, a kiss.

Ah yes, these things, I too, will miss.

Be not burdened with times of sorrow.

I wish you the sunshine of tomorrow.

My life’s been full, I savored much.

Good friends, good times, a loved one’s touch.

Perhaps my time seemed all too brief;

Don’t lengthen it now with undue grief,

Lift up your heart and share with me

God wanted me now, He set me free!

It was my time to go.

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