An Extraordinary Life: ‘He wanted to make sure everyone was safe’

Jim Pederson when he joined the Joliet Police Department in 1970, it didn’t take long for him and Gordon J. Latz Sr. of Joliet to become fast friends.

They bonded in two areas - police work and hunting – and became best friends, Jim said. Gordon had the one skill that made him outstanding in both pursuits.

“He had a lot of patience,” Jim, who lives in Joliet and North Caroline, said.

Gordon worked for the Joliet Police Department for 33 years, retiring as a lieutenant, according to his daughter Lori Harper of Wilmington.

“He started in 1963, I believe,” Lori said. “That was the same year he quit smoking.”

Gordon attended the FBI Academy for training in SWAT team, and he brought his training back to the Joliet Police Department, she said. In later years, Gordon worked for the police department at th

e Forest Preserve District of Will County, Lori said.

Jim said that Gordon was a “policeman’s policeman” and that people in the “rank and file” of the Joliet Police Department respected him. Gordon also understood “what was going on on the street.”

“When you’re a police officer, you run into people that don’t want to be around you,” Jim said. “And in our profession, we didn’t get too meet too many nice people. Everyone had a problem, either domestic or civil or whatever. And he had a good attitude on it, and I took his advice on things.

“He liked the people had to work with and he liked the people on the street he had to go to. And he always listened to their side of the story and never jumped the gun on it. He alway

s wanted to know both sides of the story.”

Lori Harper of Wilmington, Gordon’s daughter, said Gordon’s love of hunting developed in boyhood. Through the years, Gordon hunted locally, in Canada and in Wisconsin. He hunted ducks, pheasant, deer and even caught a wild goat and wild boar, Lori said.

“He hunted all his life until he couldn’t hold up his gun anymore,” Lori said.

Gordon’s affinity for police work began later, after he’d served in the Army, Lori said. Gordon showed his deep love for the U.S. and his police work by displaying a variety of flags, she

said.

Lori said her father had predicted in the 1960s that Joliet would have a drug problem. And while Gordon enjoyed “the action” and undercover work that came with his role, he had a compassionate reason as to why he loved police work.

“He wanted to make sure everyone was safe,” Lori said, adding he especially felt that way regarding children and families. “You want to make sure your city is safe for them.”

Yet when Gordon wasn’t working, he was never really not working, Lori said.

“Even when he went to a restaurant, he wasn’t ‘off,’” Lori said. “When you’re a cop, you’re never not a cop is the only way I can put it. Up until when he passed, he always observed everything.”

Lori said it’s difficult to explain Gordon’s devotion for police work.

“You can’t say he ‘enjoyed it,’ because he was seeing the worst side of life,” Lori said. “But he tried to help at the time someone needed help.”

Gordon, who loved country music, had also bought a farm in Missouri, which he rented out to farmers, Lori said. He had intended to live on the farm in later years, but a variety of health issues prevented it, she said.

But he did enjoy trips to Branson, and he did enjoy golfing, even playing miniature golf with his great-grandson Matthew, Lori said.

Lori said Gordon, when he wasn’t working, would “get out in the backyard and play a little baseball with us. He liked to wrestle with his sons, she said. And Lori has great memories of simply hanging out with her dad while he polished his shoes.

“When he came home, I’d help him get his shoes off and help polish them for him,” Lori said. “It was kind of relaxing.”

But Gordon had more time to enjoy his grandchildren and great-grandchildren because he wasn’t working all the time, she added.

Lori said kids could sometimes be afraid of Gordon simply because he was tall and looked stern. But he wasn’t a gruff person, she said.

“His grandkids could get away with anything,” Lori said.

Gordon also liked photography and developing his own photos. Lori said he took “tons” of photos at the farm and she even found some 8 millimeter films of “our famous snowball fights around the neighborhood,” she said.

Few people knew Gordon even wrote poetry, she said.

“He was a pretty sensitive guy,” Lori said. “But it wasn’t something he liked to show people.”

Sheldon Latz of Crest Hill, who, like Jim Pederson, also called Gordon his best friend, said Gordon never verbalized why he became a police officer. But when Gordon served in the Army, he was involved with the military police at Fort Sill, Oklahoma, and Sheldon feels that experience contributed to Gordon’s decision.

“As soon as he came out of the Army, he went directly to the police,” Sheldon said. “He never said why. It was just something he wanted to do.”

But Sheldon said Gordon did like to help people and he’d help wherever they needed help. Gordon even helped Sheldon build his house, Sheldon said.

Sheldon said Gordon was also a “true conservative outdoorsman,” one who never shot at anything he didn’t intend to eat. And because local farmers let the brothers shoot pheasant and duck on their farms, Sheldon and Gordon would donate their time to help the famers “take out their crops.”

“That was the right thing to do,” Sheldon said.

Gordon was 83 when he died Jan. 2.

• To feature someone in “An Extraordinary Life,” contact Denise M. Baran-Unland at 815-280-4122 or dunland@shawmedia.com.