Editor’s note: Gordon Dillow, who was an Orange County Register columnist from 1996 to 2008, died Monday. He wrote his own obituary, which was shared with the Register and runs below as a final column of sorts.
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After a lifetime of not taking care of himself, former Orange County Register columnist Gordon Dillow is dead at age 74.
He died on Monday, Dec. 8, of undetermined health causes.
But he wasn’t complaining. He led his life the way he wanted to, he exceeded his biblical allowance of three score and 10 years, and with a few exceptions, he had no regrets.
Gordon was born in Brownville, Texas, in 1951, the second son of Troy O. Dillow, a criminal investigator for the old U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service and an overseas veteran of both World War II and the Korean War; and the remarkable Louise Blackwell Dillow, a Texas sharecropper’s daughter who earned a master’s degree in social work and helped protect and save the lives of countless children during her long career. Gordon missed them to the end of his life.
Gordon graduated from high school in Silver Spring, Maryland, in 1969 and later enlisted in the U.S. Army; he served as a sergeant (E-5) in Vietnam in 1971-72. After his military service, Gordon worked in construction, hitchhiked around Europe and NorthAfrica, and somehow finally managed to graduate from the University of Montana with a bachelor’s degree in journalism. During his career, Gordon worked as a reporter and/or columnist for a number of newspapers, including the Missoula, Montana Missoulian, the San Antonio Light, the San Francisco Examiner, the Los Angeles Herald Examiner, the Los Angeles Times and the Orange County Register. Gordon loved being a newspaperman. He covered wars, earthquakes, wildfires, crime and law enforcement, sensational court trials and almost everything else.
Among other adventures, in the early 1980s Gordon was a special correspondent for the Hearst newspapers in Central America, covering the civil war in El Salvador; in 1995, he traveled extensively in Vietnam to cover the 20th anniversary of the end of thewar; and from 2003 to 2008, he was an embedded reporter with Marine infantry units during the war in Iraq. Gordon always thought it was one of the greatest honors of his life to share the hardships and dangers of those fine young Marines.
Gordon was a columnist for the Register from 1996 to 2008. He wrote hundreds of columns for the paper, some good, some bad, but he was always grateful for the support and many kindnesses he was given by Register readers.
Gordon was the author or co-author of half a dozen non-fiction books, all with major New York publishers, including “Where the Money Is: True Tales From the Bank Robbery Capital of the World” (with the late FBI Special Agent William Rehder) and the popularscience book “Fire In the Sky: Cosmic Collisions, Killer Asteroids and the Race to Defend Earth.”
He also contributed articles to the Wall Street Journal, American Heritage magazine, the Columbia Journalism Review and other publications. (For more about Gordon’s work, see gordondillow.com.)
Gordon was devastated by the premature death of his wife, Marilyn “Tule” Livingston Dillow, from cancer in 2004. Later, he was saved by Debbie Weil, who remained his best friend and helpmate to the end of his life.
Gordon is survived by his big brother, Terry Dillow, and his sister-in-law, Patty Dillow; by his little sister, Annie Dillon; by his nephews Jason Dillow, Zachary Dillow, David Dillow, Erik Geiger and Michael Wapstra; by his niece, Alex Wapstra; by his honorary grandchildren Isaiah Weil and Emma Rose Weil; and by many friends, including Phil Garlington, Larry Wisocki, Richard Randall, Ruben Castaneda, Greg Krikorian, Ruth Ingram, John McFarling, Eric Young, Katya Kratovic, Cynthia Mosk, C.P. Smith, Ray Bennett, Larry Dick and Eric Lasher.
Gordon will be buried among his fellow veterans at the National Cemetery in Phoenix, Arizona. And from that grave, he wanted to raise a toast.
To all my family and friends, living and dead: Here’s to the warm and sunny days of long ago.
And I’ll see you on the other side of the river.