Fursman was then given charge of the Illinois exhibit at the Pan-American Exposition at Buffalo, New York, and Iowa selected him to superintend its exhibit at the 1903 Louisiana Purchase Exposition in St. Louis. Peoria businessmen hired him to arrange and manage their corn carnivals. Being a forceful speaker, Fursman was in demand at county institutes, his favorite subject dealing with corn growing and corn cultivation. In this he was well ahead of his day, as he had exhibited and judged corn samples upon many occasions. He died while away in Chicago in 1907, but his body was returned to El Paso and buried in Evergreen Cemetery by that of his father, who had died while in El Paso with his son.

Dr. R. E. Gordon was the oldest son of Dr. Jerry Taylor and Mary Annas Gordon and was born in Carlyle, Illinois, September 5, 1873. Scotch and English blood flowed through the veins of his paternal grandparents.

He was graduated from the Carlyle High School, McKendree College and the Missouri Medical University, now Washington University, receiving his degree of Doctor of Medicine from the latter institution in 1893. A total of twenty-eight doctors rounded out the professional side of his family. His uncle, William Powell Gordon, M. D., with whom he lived to maturity, introduced him to the intricacies of internal medicine.

Late in 1893, Dr. Gordon, traveling by horse and buggy, arrived in Woodford County where he set up his first practice in Benson, Illinois. He had the medical teaching of his grandfather, Dr. James Gordon: "If you do no good, be sure that you do no harm." This remained with him all his life.

On July 8, 1894 he was married to Della C. Chappelle of Rolla, Missouri, to whom were born four children: Virgil C., Noel E., Robert Stanley and Virginia Gordon Wiese. Dr. Gordon opened his office in El Paso for the practice of medicine on January 1, 1895 on the second floor of the building at 15 West Front Street, but his office was later moved to his well-known building at 52 North Central Street, Centennial headquarters in 1954.

This modern-minded doctor was one of the first four men in El Paso to purchase an automobile. He often boasted in late years that he had then owned and driven fifty-five automobiles in his fifty-eight years of practicing medicine, but the doctor retained six horses and three buggies until 1915, eleven years after he purchased the first car. This was not only good travel insurance in the days of mud roads, but he hated to part with those equine friends. El Paso had early adopted the automobile, and in 1913, with a population of 1,470, there were 104 automobiles within the city limits.

Dr. Gordon published an interesting little book in 1906 called Little Buds of Promise, which contained pictures of a great many of the first

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