Basketball Gives Gordon A Place He Can Call Home Boys Ranch, Prep Career Help Saxon Deal With The Loss Of Two Families

Charlie Gordon has been abandoned twice.

The first time, he was an infant and his mother couldn’t care for him. The second time was a couple of years ago, he said, when the family that had adopted him at the age of 3 didn’t want him anymore.

Now he’s almost 18, the starting center and a top scorer for the second-ranked, unbeaten Ferris High School basketball team.

But Gordon’s life is not as simple as worrying about Friday’s game at University.

The adoptive chapter of his life is over.

“Pretty much, I’d say my parents aren’t cooperative with me or the ranch on getting back together,” said Gordon, who lives at Morning Star Boys Ranch. “They’re the ones that … terminated the adoption papers, so they are legally not my parents anymore. I’m legally not their child. They legally do not have to take care of me anymore.”

He said his adoptive parents sent him away when he was 14 and then legally “un-adopted” him. He hasn’t spoken with them in at least six months.

His adoptive mother, who requested anonymity, said the family was aware and proud of Charlie’s success in basketball.

Then she broke into tears and said, “We’re extremely pleased he is doing well. Whatever happened, happened for a reason, so he could do this.”

Now Gordon is contemplating searching for his birth mother.

“I think I was born in Spokane,” Gordon said. “I moved around a lot. They keep a lot of that information classified. I can’t have it until I’m 18.

“There’s times that I do and times that I don’t (want to know about his natural parents). I wouldn’t mind it, but there is also a chance you take that you would be rejected again. In some cases, I don’t really feel I can accept another rejection from a parent. It’s a choice I’ll probably make before school is out.”

Charlie Gordon has a family now. Colene Rubertt and Todd Younker at Morning Star, the basketball team - which went for the blond-orange look for last weekend’s Rubber Chicken game - and especially teammate Joel Soter.

But even though Rubertt refuses to miss a Ferris game, Charlie Gordon is still alone.

“At first, really, it was a shock, it didn’t really hurt very much,” he said. “Now that you get into basketball season and you see all the other players with their parents, you really get the emotional part and you start missing them a lot. It’s different. You still have all the other players’ parents coming up and saying good job, but it’s not the same.”

And Gordon struggles with that.

“I have a lot of anger toward (his adoptive parents),” he said. “I also have a lot of guilt, thinking that it’s my fault that all this happened. I’m also sad a lot that it happened because I do miss them and I love them still. It’s just a whole bunch of mixed feelings.

“Sometimes I just sit down and think about it, deal with it that way. It’s kind of hard. It’s just a thinking process for me. I just think about it and after a while it goes away. Then it comes back.”

Gordon said he never bonded with his adoptive parents.

He said he was told there may have been abuse and drug use by his birth mother that led to him being taken by the state, although he isn’t sure. Then he was put in several foster homes before being adopted.

“The psychiatrists say that I made a choice not to bond with adults,” Gordon said. “It’s really hard to bond with your family after you came through all that stuff.”

Then he paused, and before a wry chuckle added, “At least that’s what they say.”

Although Gordon has no criminal record, the strain in his family, which farms near the Tri-Cities, got to be too much by the time he was 14.

“They sent me to Bailey Moore Youth Ranch in Othello. I stayed there, met up with some nice people, then they decided to (become private),” he said. “I moved back with my family when I was 14, I think it was.

“I had fun during the summer. Then football started. I played football as a freshman down there. I kind of liked it, but my grades dropped and my parents didn’t like that much. I started hanging around gangs, drinking and skipping school, doing stuff I really shouldn’t have been doing. They sent me up to Morning Star Boys Ranch. Morning Star pretty much set me back the way I should be going. I still have a little trouble in school, but they have me working hard at that.”

A Morning Star counselor brought Gordon to Ferris basketball tryouts when he was a sophomore.

“He looked like a young man with some potential who was very raw,” Saxons coach Wayne Gilman said. “He was not even ready for the JV level, skill-wise. We decided to take a chance and keep him, based on his potential.”

From maybe a total of 15 minutes of action as a sophomore, Gordon became the starting center on the JV as a junior, joining the varsity after the regular season.

Then he made another big step.

“I was counting on him to be our starting post,” Gilman said. “I was not counting on him to be averaging in double figures and doing the good job he is doing. Charlie’s performance here has been a real pleasant surprise. He seems to have a knack around the offensive board, has long arms and jumps real well. It’s not as if we run a lot of offense to him.”

Even Gordon is surprised.

“I’d have to say so. I didn’t expect it. I came up from JV, I didn’t think I’d do this good. I don’t think many people did,” he said. “It’s a frame of mind. It’s my last year, I have to do something. I have to play the way I can play. (Soter) said all you have to do is be in the right mind-frame. He saw the potential and he helped me bring it out.”

Gordon also gets help from The Athletic Roundtable. Although he has never knowingly met an ART member, ART covers all his athletic expenses from shoes and socks to camps. ART even provided his letter-jacket.

Because Gordon has only played seriously three years and because he is pushing 6-foot-7, Gilman believes Gordon has the potential to play at the junior college level.

Ferris track coach James Fisher also believes Gordon could make state as a high jumper.

“He made great improvement last year. For the first time out, that’s impressive,” Fisher said.

Gordon went out for track to enhance his chances of making the varsity basketball team.

“I told him he can do more than that,” Fisher said. “I told him the sky’s the limit. I think he’s looking for discipline. Like any kid who has been where he’s at, he’s trying to find himself. He’s a great kid. You just have to stay on top of him, like any kid.”

Gordon, who is reserved and soft spoken but has eager eyes, credits Gilman, Fisher and JV basketball coach Brian Sachse with helping him stay focused.

“If I didn’t have basketball and track and other athletics, I think I would be back on the streets with gangs, people I shouldn’t be around,” he said. “I’d be smoking, drinking, probably be in drugs, if it wasn’t for basketball, the ranch, the coaches to keep me in line.”

Rubertt and Younker are also important members of his new family.

“They’re pretty much my parents,” he said. “They’re the ones that help me through the hard times I have with school and stuff.”

Soter, he added, is like a brother.

“I’ve had a lot of support from friends. A lot of people feel sorry (for me). I tell them not to be,” he said. “It’s nice to know people care out there, but things happen.”

Gordon is interested in being a farmer, and if basketball doesn’t work out, there’s the military.

“I’m not going to just sit on my butt and wait for something to come. I’m going to go out and get it,” he said. “That’s pretty much what I’ve been taught on the ranch. Go get your goals, don’t have them come to you.

“I have to explore different areas until I find one that’s for me.

“I could use the basketball to get in college and get an education. Pretty much I just want to succeed and prove to my parents I can do something with my life.”

, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: 2 Photos (1 Color)