The Mann Who Made A Mockery Of Retirement
A self-satisfied smile (smirk?) usually crosses my face when I describe myself as “actively retired.”
Although I’m never quite sure whether they’re being genuinely complimentary or just taking the Mick, people say “You do a lot for your age, don’t you, Mike?”
My standard modest reply tends to be: “Ah, but you should see John Marquis, my former Falmouth Packeteditor. Ho’s 80 years old – six ahead of me – and he leaves me standing for energy and output!”
And then there is, or rather was*, Gordon Mann, the much-loved former Falmouth dentist and sportsman. He was something else entirely, as I was reminded the other day when I came across one of my interviews with him back in 1988.
By then, he was already six years into retirement, but still thinking nothing of travelling all over the world dispensing voluntary dental services to underprivileged people, often in very trying circumstances.
These included the time he spent as a jungle “scout” in Bolivia.
Upon returning to his Falmouth home, he said he would do it all over again, despite memories of the ordeal when he was a pioneer, diplomat and near-mute patient rolled into one.
The trouble began shortly after he had got into an open truck to be taken on a nine-hour ride on a dirt track up into the Andes.
Within an hour of taking medicine for a stomach upset, he discovered he was allergic to the treatment. For the next six days, he could not eat or speak properly as the inside of his mouth became covered with white fungus and his face and throat were badly swollen – “I just became unrecognisable.”
But there was some vital business to complete. Gordon had been reconnoitring an area of jungle – studying buildings, water and electricity supplies etc for the purpose of establishing a Rotary International dental clinic for its impoverished inhabitants.
Came the moment when he was with Government officials seeking his signature on an agreement to proceed with the clinic.
“I could only talk with great pain and I tried to explain I didn’t feel I had the authority to sign,” he said, “but it was made clear that if I didn’t sign there was the risk that they could lose some concessions made by central Government in La Paz. So I signed it ‘subject to confirmation of Rotary International.’”
By comparison, Gordon’s other speech problem during that globetrotting stint – the language barrier when treating some 500 Brazilians – was plain sailing.
That, he told me, was simply a matter of laughter - “laughing until we understood each other and developed a rapport.”
His stint included treatment of pupils at a school with 1,500 children – where they had four shifts from 7 am to 10 pm – and of a group of nurses, aged 21 to 37, who averaged fewer than seven sound teeth.
Gordon’s “retirement” had seen a quick return to the dentist’s drill as an early responder to the call by Rotary International president Hiroshi Yukasa to “build bridges of friendship across the world.”
His involvement in the ambitious scheme also included expeditions to the Philippines (three times) and Hong Kong, with his patients including hundreds of Vietnamese “boat people.”
* Gordon died in January, 2010, aged 87, in January 2010.
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