Gordon Wyndall Scott

Gordon Wyndall Scott, devoted husband and father, medical missionary, general surgeon, and Persian carpet artisan, departed this earth on June 11, 2020, in his home with family.  Gordon was known for his dedication to his wife and their children, grandchildren, and great grandchildren, the Persian carpets he wove, his music, his prolific vegetable gardens, his mastery of the Persian language, and the lives he saved as a physician in Iran and the United States.

Gordon was born August 18, 1929, to George and Jewel Scott, in Amarillo, Texas.  He lived in Houston, Texas, from the age of 4 until he was 14, when his family returned to Amarillo, where he graduated from high school in 1947, attended Amarillo College two years, and then entered Baylor Medical School in Waco, Texas, in 1949.  Gordon met Madeline Bowman in 1951 in Amarillo, where she had recently completed nurses’ training, and they married in Clovis, New Mexico, six weeks after being introduced.  By 1955 Gordon had completed medical school, internship, and one year of surgical residency in Houston, where their son Dan was born.  In 1955 the family moved to Caribou, Maine, where their daughter Betty was born, and where Gordon served as Chief of Surgery at Loring Air Force Base.  In 1985 he joined Overton Clinic in Pampa, Texas.  From 1959 to 1963, Gordon served as a medical missionary in Rasht, Iran, near the southern coast of the Caspian Sea.  At Rasht’s 50 bed Presbyterian hospital, Gordon perfected a surgical procedure to cure those who suffered from sigmoidal volvulus, an intestinal complication caused by excessive consumption of white rice, and he published an article on this procedure in 1965 in the medical journal Diseases of the Colon & Rectum.  Gordon and Madeline’s third child, Tom, was born in Rasht.  After recovering from hepatitis A, contracted from a patient, Gordon and the family returned to the United States on November 24, 1963, on the same day they first heard the news of John F. Kennedy’s assassination.  By the summer of 1964, the Scotts had moved to Albuquerque, New Mexico, where Gordon was accepted as a surgery resident.  He completed his General Surgery training in July 1967 and then began private practice as a general surgeon in Albuquerque.  During a convalescence from patient-contracted hepatitis C, Gordon taught himself how to make Persian carpets, an art that he mastered so well that in 1985 he wrote a book on this subject titled An Illustrated Guide to Making Oriental Rugs. In 1985, Gordon and Madeline moved to Tulia, Texas, to be near his mother in Amarillo, who still lived in the same home where she had raised Gordon and his three sisters, and where she stayed until passing at the age of 100.  After two years in private practice in Tulia, he retired to pursue hobbies ranging from harmonica, to writing, to growing vegetables, to hand-knotting Persian carpets.  Gordon and his wife were also active in the First United Methodist Church, and he played an active role in recruiting physicians to practice in Tulia.  Gordon and Madeline returned to Albuquerque in 2012, where Madeline endured Alzheimer’s disease at home, with her husband’s loving care and support, until November 2014.  In Gordon’s final years he found solace in taking long daily walks at Coronado Shopping Center, where he promoted the health benefits of regular walking to fellow walkers, and performing in the praise band and choir at St. Stephen’s United Methodist Church.

Gordon was preceded in death by his wife of 63 years, Madeline, his parents, George and Jewel Scott, and his three sisters, Dorothy Combee, Margaret Johnson, and Betty Martin.

Survivors include children and spouses, all of Albuquerque (Tom Scott (Tina), Betty Glover (George), and Dan Scott (Catherine), ten grandchildren (Victoria (William), Crystal (Jim), Kyle (Lindsay), Nicole (Diego), Meredith (Jose), Greg, Lauren (Brian), George Jr., Matthew, and Sean (Bella); sixteen great grandchildren (Alex, Nick, Joel, Carolyn, Cooper, Beckett, Parker, Crosby, Aria, Amelie, Mia, Liam, Ezrianna, Leander, Diego, and Pablo), and several nieces and nephews.

A Celebration of Life will be held for Gordon at a later date.

In lieu of flowers, donations can be made to the Alzheimer’s Association, www.alz.org, or Doctors Without Borders, https://donate.doctorswithoutborders.org/onetime.cfm.