Gordon Soderberg's Memorial and Celebration of Life May 25th

Hi, I am Andy Soderberg. My sister Lynne and I are raising funds to help pay for a memorial and celebration of life for my brother Gordon Soderberg who passed away on March 17th this year. Your help is needed to raise the funds necessary to hold Gordon's memorial and celebration of life where we expect there may be several hundred in attendance.

The memorial will be on May 25th at 11AM and will be held at Farm City Detroit gardens. If you can come, please RSVP: https://www.facebook.com/events/2664196243750050

Tne Navy will give Gordon military honors with a 21-gun salute and flag presentation to our mother. The celebration of Gordon's life will be at Artist Village Detroit following the memorial.

The gardens will be dedicated to Gordon by Farm City Detroit master gardener Maria Largacha.

Speakers will include James Tate, Detroit City Councilman pro-tem of District 1, John and Alicia George of Blight Busters, along with his family and others sharing stories of Gordon's service to his community and this country.

We will then celebrate his life at the Artist Village Detroit from 12-5PM with live music where many of his paintings will be on display. Lunch will be served by a popular Detroit Food Truck and many more stories of Gordon’s life will be shared. If you knew Gordon and would like to attend, please respond to our Facebook Event Posting here: [LINK].

Why so many people? Why is this a worthy cause? Please read on to learn a little bit about Gordon.

Our family immigrated to the US from Canada in 1965. Gordon grew up in a family focused on being of service to others. Our parents were medical professionals. Our mother was a Director of Nurses and our father was one of the first licensed Respiratory Therapists in North America, where he worked in a training hospital to teach others to become Respiratory Therapists.

This upbringing led Gordon to spend his adult life in service to those in need, his community, and our country. Even though Gordon was not a citizen, he enlisted in the US Navy, at the age of 21, and became a Navy Corpsman. He served this Country with honors for 6 years during the first Iran-Iraq war. After his tour of duty, Gordon went on to be a Surgical Technician and for several years worked with Doctors to save lives every day.

After a motorcycle accident left him unable to work as a Surgical Tech, Gordon and I started a website design company with Gordon as our resident artist. Later Gordon moved to Colorado and set up Veterans Green Jobs, and for 2 years trained new veterans in green job skills (insulating homes, installing economical water heaters, and other services) for low income families. With a small team, Gordon rebuilt a perfect full scale replica of an historic log cabin that had collapsed in a national park.

Gordon was a first responder to the Hurricane Katrina disaster, setting up support camps for the Red Cross with tents, food, water, generators, and other needs. These camps supported out of state Doctors, Nurses, and incoming evacuees. Gordon arranged with several companies to donate equipment so he could set up the first mobile satellite Internet service in New Orleans after the hurricane so that evacuees could connect with family, and to get the word out that more help was needed.

Gordon remained in New Orleans for another 5 years helping people rebuild in the Lower Ninth Ward. During his time there, he built a Biofuel plant and recycled restaurant grease into biodiesel to fuel the heavy equipment used by volunteers in the Lower Ninth Ward to clean up the debris.

When Hurricane Sandy hit the east coast, Gordon was a first responder with Team Rubicon, putting all his skills from Katrina to use again. Gordon has been a first responder to several other hurricane disasters as well.

Gordon moved to Detroit in 2014 and began working with Detroit Blight Busters to help clean up and repurpose properties in Old Redford. He saw the blight in Detroit as a teaching opportunity, a slow-motion real life disaster. He trained both local volunteers and national veterans in the skills needed to respond to disasters like Katrina and Sandy. Over the past 10 years Gordon has trained thousands while doing real work to help clean up and restore neighborhoods for the residents in Detroit.

As a child Gordon learned to garden and grow vegetables from our Grandparents. He put those skills to major use in Detroit, with Maria Largacha and other volunteers, expanding the Farm City Detroit gardens, turning what was a blighted property into a bountiful community garden. For the past several years they have been growing fruits and vegetables and providing produce free to the community. From this success, several other produce gardens have been set up in other Detroit communities.

Since the age of 5 Gordon has been an artist. He practiced his talents during high school and later with me in our website company. Gordon’s art bloomed in Detroit where he began to paint oil on canvas of scenes from his life and his surroundings. Since starting this creative work in Detroit we believe he has completed several hundred paintings. Most of these paintings were either given to friends or donated to charity. Some were sold or auctioned to help cover his expenses.

Gordon died while doing what he loved. He was with several community volunteers, working to clean up a blighted property that needed dead trees removed. He was training them on how to use a chainsaw to cut large tree limbs and simply collapsed. He had a heart attack, he never regained consciousness and passed peacefully in the hospital the next day.

Gordon had such a positive impact on thousands of lives all over this country, many of whom remained connected to him over the years. If you or anyone you know may have benefited from Gordon's life of service, please also share this page to help us raise the funds needed to have his memorial and to celebrate his life.

The venues, the live music, flower arrangements, and a number of other services from the community are being donated to help make Gordon's memorial and celebration of life possible. But this does not cover all the costs. Here is the link to the Memorial/Celebration Event page on Facebook:

https://www.facebook.com/events/2664196243750050

The funds you help us to raise will be used to help pay for the following:

These estimates will be updated as we are able to arrange and lock in the services.

Your financial help to make this possible is gratefully appreciated by everyone who was close to Gordon.

Thank you,

Andrew, Lynne, and our mother Margaret