By Katie McGregor, Aberdeen High School Intern
Eleanor Roosevelt once said that, “The purpose of life is to live it, to taste experience to the utmost, to reach out eagerly and without fear for newer and richer experience.”
I personally believe that we all should strive to live life to the fullest. But to do so, we have to overcome barriers. Barriers like fear and lack of confidence that often deter us from new experiences.
However, for Aberdeen High School sophomore Gordon Shaw, these barriers don’t seem to exist. One simple look at Gordon and it’s obvious that he is confident and comfortable with himself.
Gordon’s ambitious and curious nature developed early on in his life. In the fifth grade, Gordon, like others his age, chose the instrument he wanted to play in beginning orchestra based on how cool it sounded. His choice? The cello. Gordon continued playing the cello through elementary school and up until 8th grade when he was recruited to play bass in the Miller Junior High jazz band. “They [asked], ‘Hey Gordon! Do you want to play the bass for us? You play some sort of string instrument,’” Gordon explains, recalling his recruitment. Even though the bass is an entirely different instrument from the cello, Gordon agreed. “It wasn’t until the end of freshman year that I could finally pick out the right notes and actually play the bass correctly,” Gordon says.
Freshman year was a brave time for Gordon. He became good enough on his cello to join the Grays Harbor Symphony, a group comprised of mostly adults, and even decided to audition for the highly prestigious and elite Tacoma Youth Symphony. After he played his audition song, the judges handed him a piece of music to sightread. This is when Gordon admitted something that few besides his parents actually knew: he couldn’t read music. All this time, Gordon had been playing by ear.
Despite the pesky little fact of being a musician that could not read music, the judges were impressed with his skill and he was accepted into the Tacoma Youth Symphony. In order to learn how to read all of those little black notes, Gordon started playing the piano, which he says has since become his favorite instrument. While he has no aspirations of pursuing a career in music, Gordon wants to continue playing. “When I’m in my 60s,” he says, “I want to still be playing the piano.”
But music isn’t the only activity Gordon excels in. In seventh grade, Gordon joined the track team just because he wanted to try something new. He primarily participated in the 100 meter dash and the long jump, and he often dominated in the 200 meter dash as well. Gordon never had any aspirations or goals where track was concerned, he just really enjoyed running. Then, in his 8th grade year, something unexpected happened. Gordon Shaw, Kyle Hurd, Braden Castleberry-Taylor and Jeran Paris, all members of Miller Junior High’s 800 medley relay team, unknowingly broke the national record for that distance. As you may imagine, when the boys learned that they had broken a national record, they were absolutely ecstatic. Unfortunately, the team’s newly claimed record was broken by another team within 24 hours. Still, the Miller boys had one last chance to prevail. The team’s last track meet was May 22, 2013, at the Seabreeze Oval in Hoquiam, and they had plans to reclaim the record.
When I asked Gordon how he prepared himself for the world record-breaking attempt, he said, “I didn’t eat anything bad. No junk food or soda.” On the day of the meet, the team ran faster than they ever had before, shaving one second off of their previous time to reclaim the national record with a time of 1:46.18. Fast forwarding to this year, Gordon now aspires to beat Aberdeen High School’s record for the 400 meter dash, which is currently 48.98 seconds. Though he’s only a sophomore and has three years of track competition until he graduates, Gordon is already intensely training to beat the record. “If I don’t treat every year like my last,” he says, “I’m never going to get there.”
In addition to his goal of setting another track record, Gordon also plays football. It’s in his blood, after all. Gordon’s grandfather, George Shaw, was the quarterback for the Baltimore Colts and was the first player in the 1955 NFL Draft. Following in his grandfather’s footsteps, during Gordon’s freshman year, he was the main running back on Aberdeen’s junior varsity football team. Unfortunately, this year, Gordon tore his quad muscle and was on the bench for nearly the whole season. Despite this, he hopes to be the running back for the varsity team next year.
As if he needs more on his plate, Gordon is also captivated by science. He is fascinated by medicine and the human body and aspires to be a neurologist or diagnostician someday. He also plans to write books on subjects ranging from fantasy and science fiction to romance novels. And here’s a little known fact: Gordon was 200 or so pages into his first manuscript when the only copy was lost in a computer transfer.
Another fun fact: as you can see in the photo, after trying out for his first play in 2013, Gordon landed one of the lead roles as Lord Farquaad in 7th Street Theatre’s production of Shrek. Not only was Gordon’s acting outstanding, but he was outright hilarious. And with Lord Farquaad being so short, Gordon had to do the entire play on his knees. I remember laughing until tears came to my eyes because his mere presence on the stage was absolutely overwhelming. I, personally, will remember Gordon’s performance in Shrek for many years.
Overall, Gordon is a very confident person and is someone that you can’t help but want to be friends with. When I asked him if he had a key to confidence, Gordon said, “Just don’t care what people think of you. Sometimes I do care, sometimes I don’t, and when I don’t, I can be myself. If you worry what people think about you all the time, you’re going to go nuts. Just be nice all the time and that’ll work out.”
Gordon Shaw is a young man that I hope to always be friends with. If, for some reason, our lives diverge at some point in the future, he will be one of the first I look for at reunions. For no other reason than to find out what he has done with his life.
