Herbert "Herb" Jordan

Services honoring the life of Herbert “Herb” Rosco Jordan will be 10:00 a.m., Thursday, February 21, 2019 at Tulsa Christian Fellowship. Viewing will take place at the church on Thursday, prior to the service from 9:00 a.m. until service time. Burial will be Thursday at 1:15 p.m. at Floral Haven Memorial Gardens. Herbert Roscoe Jordan was born October 23, 1929 in Quincy, Florida, the son of Charles and Beatrice Jordan. He was raised in a tiny town in southwestern Alabama called Fulton, north of Mobile. It was very rural, and it was a lumber town. Literally – it was pretty much a company town of Scotch Lumber Company, where his dad worked. He grew up there, played football for his county high school, and then went to a prep school, Gulf Coast Military Academy in Mobile, to burnish his grades and his football skills in hopes of playing college football. At GCMA he got his first exposure to a military environment, but also did well enough to garner the attention of coaches at Georgia Tech, where he attended and played for a year before transferring to Auburn University in Auburn, Alabama. There, he played football for three years, while earning a degree from the Auburn school of engineering. He was a defensive back, and played with Vince Dooley, who went on to coach Georgia to a national championship. He and Vince kept in touch through the years, and Vince visited their home in Rogers a few times when he was in town as Athletic Director of Georgia there to play the Arkansas Razorbacks in nearby Fayetteville. One story from Herb’s football career was about the time he tackled Max McGee in a game against Tulane, which was then in the Southeastern Conference. McGee went on to a career with the Green Bay Packers and is famous for scoring two touchdowns in the first Super Bowl. Herb notes that he made the tackle, but was knocked unconscious when he hit McGee, who was then a fullback, and much larger than Herb. He told the Tulsa World, in a story the newspaper did about Herb in 2018, that when McGee hit him, “he went out like a light.” After college graduation, he entered the Air Force, and completed basic training at the now-defunct Webb Air Force Base in Big Spring, Texas. Herb first learned to fly while at Columbus Air Force Base in Columbus, Mississippi, despite never having ambition to become a pilot. But he quickly took to flying, and advanced rapidly, flying several different kinds of planes during his Air Force career before settling in to flying B52s. While stationed there, he met Virginia “Gigi” Avery, who would a few years later become his wife. They were married in June, 1955, and were married for 62 years before Gigi’s death in 2018. During the various inevitable transfers that come with military life, Herb worked as an air controller and then pilot instructor for various planes. He soon was promoted to the rank of Major and was stationed at Ellsworth Air Force Base near Rapid City, South Dakota, from 1963 to 1969. It was during that time he was deployed to Guam, where he flew B-52 missions over Vietnam. From 1969 to 1972, Herb was stationed at March Air Force Base near Riverside, California, where he was promoted to lieutenant colonel, and then to Fairchild Air Force Base in Spokane, Washington. During his years posted at Fairchild, he was involved in a strategic and controversial campaign called Operation Linebacker II, known popularly as “The Christmas Bombings.” Then-president Richard Nixon decided with his military advisers that something dramatic must be done to bring the North Vietnamese back to the peace talk table in Paris. An eleven-day campaign to bomb Hanoi was undertaken, and Herb flew three of those eleven nights in his B52, commanding a squadron each time. Usually commanded by a lieutenant colonel, squadrons range in size from 30 to 500 personnel depending upon the mission. Fighter squadrons typically are assigned 18-24 aircraft. He remembers that Christmas as the hardest of his life, with the dangerous missions, and away from his family. His daughter Barbara turned 15 on the third night of that campaign in December 1972 – one of the nights Herb flew. Herb was promoted to full Colonel in 1973, and was transferred to the Pentagon. His two oldest children, Barb and her brother Russell, were in high school during those years, and Barb graduated from high school while Herb was stationed at the Pentagon for 3 years, while youngest son Peter was in grade school. He then spent two years at Griffiss Air Force Base in Rome, New York, where he was base commander. He finished his military career from 1978 to 1981 as director of safety for the 8th Air Force at Barksdale Air Force Base near Shreveport, Louisiana. When he retired from the Air Force in 1981, they moved to Rogers, Arkansas, where Gigi’s mother lived. Herb worked for 15 more years after retiring from the Air Force. He was director of safety for the trucking company J.B. Hunt, where he made many friends. He and Gigi were active in Immanuel Baptist Church in Rogers, and Herb attended men’s Bible studies there and at other venues. He grew close to their pastor, Tom Hatley. He visited those in nursing homes, and like Gigi, served with the crisis pregnancy center there in Rogers, Loving Choices. Herb had a very winning personality, and everybody seemed to like him in pretty much every circle in his life – his neighborhood, his church, his work, and his former Air Force colleagues and their families. He kept in touch with many, right up until he was moved to memory care. He was very generous with his friends and family. If you think in terms of “love languages,” Herb’s was definitely gift giving (and receiving). He agonized over the right gifts for people but loved giving people things. You would practically have to arm wrestle him to pay for a breakfast or lunch. He also greatly enjoyed receiving gifts – it was the primary way he expressed and received love. He also had a winning sense of humor. He had all these wonderful southern colloquialisms. When it rained hard, it sounded like “a cow tinkling on a flat rock,” or he’d say, “you can’t swing a dead cat without hitting (whatever there was a lot of nearby).” He could tease with the best of them. He lived and died with both his Auburn Tigers football teams, and Arkansas Razorbacks football and basketball. When the Hogs won the basketball NCAA national championship in 1994, he bought everybody gifts commemorating the win, from t-shirts to a gold hog pendant with a ruby eye for Gigi. Until near the end of his life, the months of the college football season were the high holy days for Herb, who would plant himself in a chair or on the couch, or on a bed with the TV on, and watch games from late morning into the night. When he fully retired in 1996, they built their home on Beaver Lake, about 30 minutes from their Rogers home. He loved that property. He would go out there by himself when Gigi didn’t want to go with him. He had a boat, and would run around on the lake for a while, and loved to water ski when he had someone there to drive the boat for him. He and Gigi would go to the lake house often in those early days, after 1997, when the house was completed. He loved to “putter” around, taking care of little things in and around the house. Gigi made him get a cell phone (which he barely learned to use) when she learned he was using the chain saw to cut wood around the house – she was worried about an accident when he was alone there. He got a lot of enjoyment out of that house – even more so than Gigi, whose dad had bought the property in the early 1960s before the lake was there (it was created when the White River was dammed by Beaver Dam). It remains his legacy as much as hers – even though the place is now referred to by family as Avery Acres (Avery was Gigi’s maiden name). You can rent a piece of Jordan/Avery history by staying at Avery Acres, which the family began renting as a vacation home part of the year in 2018. In 2006, the family began noticing his shaky hand. When asked about it, Herb consulted a doctor, who initially told him that it was due to some medications he was taking. But soon, it became clear that it was something else, and he was diagnosed with Parkinson’s. He did pretty well for several years after the diagnosis. He was 77 when the official diagnosis came, and for probably six or seven years after, he was still able to drive without difficulty, and do almost everything he had previously done. The tremors were a problem, but not debilitating, and the growing rigidity associated with Parkinson’s had yet to become a significant challenge. Herb and Gigi moved to Broken Arrow, OK, to live with his daughter Barbara and her husband Bill in July 2015. He lived with them until just two and a half weeks before his death on February 18, 2019, when he was moved to a memory care home after developing Parkinson’s Disease Dementia. He was a devoted husband, father, grandfather, and friend to many. This was the real Herb Jordan, before Parkinson’s began to take its terrible toll on his body, and eventually his mind. He was preceded in death by parents, and by his wife of 62 years, Gigi. He is survived by his daughter, Barbara Sullivan and her husband, Bill, of Broken Arrow, OK, his son Russell Jordan and his wife Brenda, of Dallas, TX, his son Peter and his wife Kim, of Atlanta, GA; his sister, Janet Carlisle; and grandchildren Lisa Sullivan of Tulsa, Laura Embry and her husband Sam of Tulsa, David Jordan and his wife Janie of Houston, TX, Lenny Jordan and Heath Jordan of Atlanta, GA, along with many nieces and nephews. Burial will be at Floral Haven in Broken Arrow, next to his late wife, Gigi.

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Herbert "Herb" Jordan

October 23, 1929 - February 18, 2019