Marvin Lee Gordon

November 6, 1926 - February 7, 2023

It is with great sadness that the family of Marvin Lee Gordon announce the death of our husband, father, grandfather and great grandfather.

He was born and raised in Columbus, Ohio to Sam and Bess Gordon on November 6, 1926. Here he graduated from high school during World War 2. He attended Ohio State for one semester before persuading his parents to sign off for him to join a Navy V12 program, a course designed to accelerate the production of doctors. He then went to war in a sailor suit at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio until the war ended in 1945. Lacking a few credits he stayed at Miami to graduate Phi Beta Kappa.

At age 19 he entered Harvard Medical School where many of his friends were veterans of the war. It was at Harvard that Marvin learned to love many of the finer aspects of life such as music and art.

He took a years leave in his Junior year to study at Hans Selye’s lab in Montreal where he also learned to ski, a lifelong passion. After an internship at Columbia Presbyterian in New York the Navy called during the Korean War and he was sent to sea with the 6th Fleet into the Mediterranean and through the Suez Canal to Aidan, Sri Lanka and Pakistan with stops coming and going in Venice and Paris. Back in the U.S. He ended his Navy Duty at the Naval Hospital in Long Island where he became interested in Orthopedics. He met his wife Pat in NYC and after a whirlwind courtship, they settled in NYC for a year of general surgery at Bellevue Hospital and 3 years at NY Orthopedic Hospital.

Upon finishing his residency, Marvin, Pat and their 2 children moved to San Francisco where he established his practice. Marvin loved California, The City, the mountains and The Bay where he sailed, hiked, skied and went camping with the family. By then, they were a family of 5 and needed more space, so they built a redwood and glass house in Diamond Heights, where they lived for 45 years.

Marvin volunteered with C.A.R.E. and went to Afghanistan twice and to Bangladesh once in the 70’s to teach local doctors contemporary techniques in surgery using available products.

Those were very satisfying trips, but when invited to go to Uganda (where he would have to carry a gun), he declined. Thus ushered in his travel years to Asia where he collected Chinese art.

Marvin served on the boards of the Asian Art Museum and the Craft and Folk Art Museum. During those years he continued to ski with a group of friends for 2 weeks every year in Europe. He eventually hung up his skis at age 80, complaining he didn’t have anyone to ski with.

He and Pat sold their collection of Chinese Ceramics Art in 2009 when they moved into the San Francisco Towers. Marvin moved into the memory care unit of Rhoda Goldman in 2020, and into the new Memory Unit at the Towers last October. He leaves wife Patricia, son Dave (Sarah), Daughter Pamela Fine, Richard Rugg husband of recently deceased daughter Stephanie Gordon Rugg, Grandsons, Andrew( Kendell) and Jordan(Nicole) Rugg, Casey and Miles Gordon, Max and Sam Fine, four Great Grand Daughters, sister in law Susan Harkey and her sons, Teall and Robert.