Gordon Puls, Jr., former SWCS teacher - and my cousin - has died

   CANTON, Ohio - Former SWCS teacher Gordon (Gordy) Puls, Jr. died last night.
     He was teaching math in the junior high wing of Southwestern the last few years of our time at high school.
     I once committed the nearly unpardonable sin of calling him "Gordy" in the hallway as classes were passing. He was my cousin, after all, so the slip was given a pass.

Gordy Puls, Jr.

     He was 79 when he died. And that age difference as kids made him my cousin, but also sort of a grumpy older brother, too.
     From the time my mother and I moved to Lakewood in 1959, Gordy got stuck often with me - taking me fishing, hunting, and boating. All the things a 10-year-old kid from Brooklyn (me!) knew nothing about.
     But he also taught me how to sail, which oddly enough is connected to the post/news yesterday about Lakewood Beach.
     Gordy and his older sister Barbara were lifeguards at Lakewood Beach. And so it was some years later that Kathleen McAvoy (also my cousin and Gordy's cousin) worked at Lakewood Beach as a lifeguard. I joined the ranks about then, too, making Lakewood Beach kind of a family business.
     But after several years of working at the beach I got sideways with the legendary Harold 'Doss' Johnson, father of late SWCS Class of '66 classmate Pam Johnson Berglund and teacher at SWCS.
     I ended up getting suspended for one week without pay for not getting permission from Doss (who ran Lakewood Beach every summer as an administrator) to take a day off from lifeguarding. I had a substitute lifeguard (my cousin Kathleen) step in.

'Doss' Johnson

     The punchline to this too-long, Lakewood Beach-Gordy Puls anecdote is that Gordy let me borrow his Snipe sailboat for the week. He simply said, "Just go have fun." He'd had his own run-ins with Doss.
     I did just as he said and fun cruising all over the lake, including a few passes back and forth in front of Lakewood Beach while Doss watched me from the shore.
     That week, Gordy's sailboat, and his generosity was the start of a life of sailing for me, capped by cruising to Mexico on my 48-foot sloop Sabbatical in 2002.
     Gordy and his dad Gordy Sr. were both good friends of Flash Olsen and Harold Burgard from SWCS. Many times after high school I sat in the kitchen of the Puls house and sipped a beer with the group. Not with Flash - he didn't drink. But the others sure did. Whatever beer was sale.
     My cousin Gordy married and moved to Ohio where he and his wife raised his children. He had a career in education. But we lost touch over the years. The last time I saw him was at his brother-in-law's celebration of life in Lakewood some years back.
     R.I.P. "Mr. Puls." And thanks for letting me borrow the Snipe. It changed my life.