By Sorrel Hoskin

Doris and Bill Gordon's family grew up steeped in the medical profession - so it wasn't a surprise when three of their four children turned to medicine. 

"We were surrounded by it," recalls Dr Ross Gordon. "It was in the days when doctors were available for their patients. Our phone was answered 24 hours a day. There was always someone there. It was quite obvious to me from the age of nine or ten that I wanted to be a doctor."

The children were actively encouraged toward medicine from an early age - but only if they showed an interest.

Ross's older brother Peter did not have medical aspirations and went on to join the RAF before settling on a farm in the South Island and becoming a member of parliament and cabinet minister. His younger brother Graham became a doctor and his sister Alison trained as a nurse.

"I was quite sure from the day I was born mother had made up her mind I was going to go into medicine, I was pushed into something that I loved," says Dr Gordon.

He recalls helping his parents on many occasions as a young boy, from helping to sew up the backside of a horse that had fallen on a set of discs, to a St Bernard dog that had a broken leg at the Stratford Mountain house (vets were few and far between in Stratford, so the doctors often helped out).

One memory that sticks in his mind is being allowed to stand at the door of the operating theatre at Marire, holding the electrical switch that operated a pump to suction the blood from a patient, while his parents operated. "I was told when to turn it on and off."      

The young children were encouraged to explore the world around them - down to discovering the inner workings of a dead pet rabbit.

Years later, then a young medical student, Dr Gordon assisted at surgery at the hospital with the help of his mother. In the early 1940s he helped build the new Marire hospital in the backyard of the family home.

Despite her busy career, Doris found time both for her family and her love of gardening.  A housekeeper helped look after the children when she was away.

"Mother was a very keen gardener - she grew dahlias and chrysanthemums, hydrangeas, I can remember going to local flower shows with boxes of cut flowers in a box in the back of the car."

Bill Gordon had a vegetable garden that provided fresh vegetables for the family and the residents of their private hospital Marire.

She loved animals: the family had a small farm near Eltham, where Doris kept pigs: "my father called it her pigwifery. She had a pedigree Berkshire called Flora MacDonald, so father named a Tamworth boar Bonnie Prince Charlie! Then the share milker brought in a mongrel flop-eared thing, and he called his Sheila McSweeny.

They kept cows, and hens, the young Gordons collecting the eggs.

 "We had to do odd jobs around the house so we would get paid so much for mowing the lawn, or cleaning the hall or cutting the hedge."

The Gordon children went to primary school in Stratford before being sent off to boarding school.

On school holidays they would go to Urenui beach for a break - their father joining them when he could.

"When we were there in the 30s there wasn't a single bach down by the water there, it was covered in lupin. The only building there was the old cook house under the hill. To get the water there was a pump in front of the cook house and you pumped this thing up and down and carried kerosene tins with a yolk.  We cooked in kerosene tins on their side with the fire in between."

In 1943 the family brought a house at Urenui - they still visit it at weekends.

Ross and Graham were taken by their parents to school in Switzerland just before World War II, so they could experience a different country and culture. Their trip was cut short when war was declared. The teenagers took their turn on the ship's bridge looking for enemy submarines on what turned out to be a quiet return journey to New Zealand.

Dr Gordon describes his mother as a very strong woman.

"If she wanted something done she got it done. Sometimes she got it done by fair means or foul." Her forthright opinions didn't often sit well with her male colleagues in the medical fraternity, but although they may have not got on with her - she earned their respect. Doris Gordon got things done. 

"She deliberately set you a task and you did it. She was always setting us tasks or challenges to achieve. Like the time she decided I would bicycle home from school at Christchurch and another occasion she organised for us to bicycle from Stratford to Auckland. She set it all up for me to stay with friends along the way. I did it."