Dr. Gordon Vandiver couldn’t throw anything away – whether it was a tractor or a pair of slippers.
“Our house is a-clutter with antique furniture,” said his wife, Carolyn.
Gordon Vandiver, who practiced medicine in La Junta for more than 40 years, died Jan. 30. He was 86.
He was dedicated to his patients and liked people, his wife said, unless they were “impatient or boastful.”
He had a lot of other interests, too. After he retired, he fixed up a 1927 Star Roadster and a 1948 John Deere tractor. The vehicles, and others he worked on, were in working order, but he spruced them up with paint, lights and bumpers.
He had three John Deere tractors and then bought a Massey Ferguson tractor.
“We did not need it,” Carolyn said.
He sometimes went as far as Hershey, Pa., to get replacement parts for the old vehicles.
The Vandivers rode in the Star Roadster during local parades, but he took the tractors to the family “farm,” east of La Junta, where he used them in cleanup projects.
Vandiver also had antique lamps and tables and two collections of tools.
“I couldn’t even get him to throw away his old pair of slippers,” his wife said. “I bought him a new pair, but it was a year before he wore them.”
Vandiver’s daughter Donna Vandiver-Pack, of Lacombe, La., likened the slipper anecdote to stories she had heard of rich people decades ago who believed it was gauche to wear something they had just bought.
“They’d pack it away and wait a year to wear it,” she said, laughing. “That’s what Dad did.”
Vandiver loved maps and always knew exactly where he was going.
“But he couldn’t pass up a dirt road,” said Vandiver-Pack. “He just had to turn down every dirt road to see what was at the end.”
Gordon H. Vandiver was born Nov. 24, 1919, in Tuba City, Ariz., and, as a child, moved to La Junta with his parents. The family moved around several times, and Vandiver graduated from Polytech High School in San Diego. He earned his bachelor of science degree at the University of California at Los Angeles and his medical degree at the University of Southern California.
He entered the military before going through the graduation ceremony. In 1995, USC invited him to join the graduates so he could finally attend the ceremony he missed 50 years earlier.
Vandiver married Carolyn Coates on Feb. 3, 1943.
In addition to his wife and daughter, he is survived by two other daughters, Dianne Vandiver of Los Alamos, N.M., and Sonya Vandiver-Richardson of Bakersfield, Calif.; two sons, Steven Vandiver of Alamosa and Jon Vandiver of La Junta; seven grandchildren; five great-grandchildren; and his brother, Paul Vandiver of Albany, Ore.
Staff writer Virginia Culver can be reached at 303-820-1223 or vculver@denverpost.com.
