Harry Gordon (journalist)

Henry Alfred Gordon, CMG, AM (9 November 1925 – 21 January 2015) was an Australian journalist, war correspondent, author, and historian of the Olympic Games. During his journalistic career, he served as editor of The Sun News-Pictorial, and editor-in-chief of The Herald and Weekly Times and Queensland Newspapers. From 1992 to 2015, he was the official historian of the Australian Olympic Committee.

Gordon was born 9 November 1925 to Harry Gordon, a dockworker, and his wife, Marjorie.^[1] As a child, he was taught to tap dance by his mother and to box by his father.^[2] He was educated at Elwood Primary School and Melbourne High School, a selective all-boys school.^[1][2] He was a high school middleweight boxing champion.^[1]

Gordon began his journalistic career as a teenager, working as a copyboy for The Daily Telegraph when he was 16.^[3][4]

He began working at The Sun News-Pictorial in 1949 as a general reporter.^[1][5] In 1950, at the age of 24, he was sent abroad to cover the Korean War from the front-line.^[6] In addition to his own newspaper, his war reports were published in the Adelaide Advertiser, The West Australian and The Courier-Mail. Shocked by the edits made to his reports by the United States' censorship teams, he developed a system of flying to Japan when he had a particularly good story, and dictating his report to a friend who would take a copy to the AAP-Reuters office in Tokyo for direct transmission to Australia; this avoided the reports being censored.^[1]

In 1968, he was appointed Editor of The Sun News-Pictorial.^[5] He used his newspaper to head a campaign titled 'Declare War on 1034' to reduce car-related fatalities;^[1] the number is a reference to the number of road deaths in Victoria in 1969. The campaign was successful and in 1970 the state government introduced a mandatory seatbelt law requiring car users to wear seatbelts; this was the first such law in the world.^[3]

He was Chairman of the Australian Associated Press in the 1980s.^[7][8]

As a journalist, he covered every Olympic Games between 1952 and 2012: his first Olympics being the Helsinki Games, and his last the London Games.^[2]

In 1992, he was appointed the official historian of the Australian Olympic Committee.^[8] He wrote a history of Australia's participation in the Olympics. It was titled Australia and the Olympic Games and it was published in 1994.^[4] In 2003, he authored The Time of Our Lives: Inside the Sydney Olympics : Australia and the Olympic Games 1994–2002 and in 2014 From Athens With Pride: The Official History of the Australian Olympic Movement, 1894 to 2014.^[9]

Gordon played a major role in the naming of streets around the 1956 Melbourne and 2000 Sydney Olympic precincts. The streets were named to honour significant Olympic athletes.^[9]

He was a member of the Australian Football Hall of Fame selection committee from 1996 to 2008.^[10]

He was hospitalised two weeks before his death because of respiratory issues.^[5] He died in January 2015, aged 89.^[6]

Gordon married Dorothy Scott in 1951. Together, they had three children; Sally, Michael and John, who all followed Harry into the media (Michael into journalism, John as a news and sports cameraman, and Sally as make-up artist for film and television). He remarried in 1993 to Joy Milner. He is survived by his three children, seven grandchildren and second wife.

He was a supporter of Hawthorn Football Club. He wrote a history of the Australian Football club which was published in 1990.^[10]

• 1980 – appointed Companion of the Order of St Michael and St George (CMG) 'for service to Journalism in Queensland'.^[11]
• 1990 – inducted into Sport Australia Hall of Fame^[12]
• 1993 – appointed Member of the Order of Australia (AM).^[3] in recognition of service to the community and to the promotion of Australian sport.
• 1999 – awarded the Order of Merit, the highest honour awarded by the Australian Olympic Committee.^[6][11]
• 2000 – awarded Australian Sports Medal
• 2001 – awarded the Olympic Order, the highest honour awarded by the International Olympic Committee.^[3]
• 2002 – Australian Sports Commission inaugural award for Lifetime Achievement Award in Sports Journalism.^[13]
• 2003 – Melbourne Press Club Lifetime Achievement in Journalism Award.^[9]
• 2003 – Member of the Melbourne Cricket Ground Media Hall of Fame.^[9]
• 2006 – International Society of Olympic Historians ISOH Award – the supreme award in its field, and the second ever made.^[9]

• The embarrassing Australian : the story of an Aboriginal warrior. Melbourne : Lansdowne Press, 1962.
• Young men in a hurry : the story of Australia's fastest decade. 2nd ed. Melbourne : Lansdowne, 1961.
• Gold medal girl. Melbourne: Lansdowne, 1965
• Famous Australian news pictures. South Melbourne, Vic. : Macmillan, 1975.
• An eyewitness history of Australia. Adelaide : Rigby, 1976 (Four editions published and won the National Book Council's First Prize for Australian Literature).^[12]
• Die like the carp! : the story of the greatest prison escape ever. Stanmore, N.S.W. : Cassell Australia, 1978.
• Bicentennial : an Australian mosaic and 1788 diary. Stafford, Qld. : Sunshine Diaries, 1988
• The hard way : the story of Hawthorn Football Club. Paddington, N.S.W. : Lester-Townsend, 1990.
• The shadow of death : the Holocaust in Lithuania. Lexington, Ky. : University Press of Kentucky, c1992
• Voyage from shame : the Cowra break-out and afterwards. St Lucia, Qld. : University of Queensland Press, 1994.
• Australia and the Olympic Games. St. Lucia, Qld. : University of Queensland Press, 1994.
• Australian Olympic legends. Melbourne : Australia Post, c1998.
• The time of our lives : inside the Sydney Olympics : Australia and the Olympic Games 1994–2002. St Lucia, Qld. : University of Queensland Press, 2003.
• One for all : the story of the Hawthorn Football Club. Melbourne : Wilkinson Publishing, 2009 (with son Michael Gordon)
• From Athens with pride : the official history of the Australian Olympic movement, 1894 to 2014. St Lucia, Queensland University of Queensland Press, 2014

• Harry Gordon at the Sport Australia Hall of Fame
• Papers of Harry Gordon at National Library of Australia
• Harry Gordon interviewed by Hazel de Berg in the Hazel de Berg collection,National Library of Australia, 1980
• Interview with Henry Alfred (Harry) Gordon, author and journalist by interviewer, Gregg Borschmann, National Library of Australia, 2001
• Harry Gordon interviewed by Michael McKernan in the Sport oral history project, National Library of Australia, 2009