Today’s Breakfast is entitled, No Man Left Behind, and I am pleased to introduce its organizer and leader, Gordon Thayer. Most of you know Gordon as a friend, a mentor, a USAF PJ, a pastor, a Tribal Chair, yet what I want to do in this introduction is share some details you may not know about Gordon, our brother in Christ.
He was born at LCO and spent his first 10 years on LCO living with his grandparents. His parents had been relocated to Chicago during this time of “native relocation.” When he was about 10 years of age he moved to Milwaukee and began hanging out with friends who were not opposed to trouble. It was in 1962 that he joined the USAF with an urging from a judge as his best option to avoid reform
school. These years in the USAF occurred in part in Florida, the Azores, and Vietnam, as a PJ or pararescue airman – really a special forces airman – skilled in rescue and survival; and someone who jumps out of helicopters or aircraft to rescue downed pilots or service members needing rescue from the enemy. Let me read a bit of Gordon’s Silver Star award given to him for heroism in the Republic of
Vietnam on August 25, 1966. The award said in part:
“On that date, Airman Thayer was a Pararescueman aboard a Rescue Helicopter, which was shot down and forced to crash-land while attempting to evacuate wounded Army personnel. Shaking off the effects of shock of the
extremely hard landing and with complete disregard for personal safety, Airman Thayer tended to the Army wounded while subjecting himself to intense hostile fire. By his gallantry and devotion to duty, Airman Thayer has reflected great credit upon himself and the United States Air Force.”
In addition to his Silver Star, he also received two Distinguished Flying Crosses for valor
in Vietnam, he was a wartime hero, in a war that was looked down upon by many in the USA. In part due to this wartime experience and his earlier use of alcohol, Gordon began a pattern of filling his heart’s “God-shaped hole” with alcohol. Even alcohol doesn’t treat PTSD, though it is often used to mask the symptoms. This went on from his discharge from the USAF in 1970 into the 1980s, until 1981,
when the Jesus Christ transformed him, and he was born again as a Christian. He had already been tribal chair, prior to his transformation, and he then went onto from 1986-1992 to work for Bureau of Indian Affairs in Minneapolis, dealing with housing and homelessness in 29 regional tribes. When he left BIA in 1992, he founded American Indian Community Development Corporation in order to
provide service to Chronic alcoholic urban homeless population. I forgot to mention he managed to find time to marry Sheila in 1990 during these busy years, and become ordained by the International Ministerial Fellowship, based in MN. It also was during these years that they founded Overcomer’s Ministry and it is this ministry that exists today and is a large reason all of us men are joined together
today.
In 2006 Gordon was awarded the FBI Director’s Community Leadership award for outstanding service to the community, and in 2007 he left he AICDC to help Sheila launch the First Nations Recovery Center outpatient treatment center for Native people in Minneapolis. In 2015 Gordon and Sheila relocated from Minneapolis to Hayward and LCO and
are now basing their Overcomer’s Ministry here.
As Gordon lived out life as a pararescue airman – the USAF PJ motto was “that others may live” and a corollary was they would leave no man behind. He is here today to help us understand how Christ offers that same rescue, by leaving
none of us behind that acknowledge him as Savior and Lord. Gordon the floor is yours.
