It is with great sadness that we report that Dr. Susan G. Gordon – the wife of Teachers College Professor Emeritus Edmund W. Gordon –passed away yesterday.

“Dr. Susan,” as she was universally known, was a brilliant and dedicated pediatrician, a longtime professor of pediatrics at Columbia University’s College of Physicians and Surgeons, and a Fellow of the American Academy of Pediatrics. From 1978-1981, she served as a member of The National Panel on the Measurement of the Program Effects of Head Start. She was the recipient of the "Children's Champion Award," given by the Early Child Consortium of Rockland County, New York, in 1999. In 2000, the classrooms and computer center of the Martin Luther King Jr. Multi-purpose Center, Inc. Spring Valley, NY was dedicated as the Susan G. Gordon, M.D. Education Corridor. In 2006, the Gordons were inducted into the Rockland County Civil Rights Hall of Fame.

Yet this list of remarkable accomplishments doesn’t begin to tell the story of “Dr. Susan.” For more than 60 years, she and Ed Gordon formed a dynamic team that was vastly more than the sum of its two stellar parts. Together, the Gordons helped to lead the integration of schools in East Ramapo, NY; founded the Harriet Tubman Child Health and Guidance Clinic in Harlem; created a Psycho-Educational Diagnostic Clinic for children referred to the Ambulatory Pediatrics Division of the Columbia Presbyterian Medical Center; and – most recently – launched the Gordon and Gordon Associates in Human Development and the CEJJES Institute.

The Gordons proudly proclaimed on the CEJJES Institute website that their greatest collaboration is their four children, nine grandchildren and one great-grandson. 

In short, Susan Gordon modeled everything that a dedicated physician, concerned citizen and loving wife and mother should be. Though she did not attend Teachers College, her spirit and influence is woven into the fabric of our institution. We mourn her passing and offer our deepest condolences to Professor Gordon and his family.

Published Tuesday, Jan 26, 2016