By Dien Rice

In June, I took a trip to Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio, to visit Gordon Alexander. I had been communicating with Gordon online, but he was still an enigma. This trip was to be a trip of discovery, to find out the "real" Gordon Alexander. Who was he really – was he really who he claimed to be online?

I flew in a little propeller planefrom Dulles Airport in Washington D.C. to Akron/Canton airport in Ohio.  I had no idea what Gordon looked like, but I had shown him several pictures online of what I looked like, so I hoped he would recognize me. We landed, and I crossed the tarmac into the terminal building.  Appearing from the milling crowd, a man with a tuft of white beard on his chin grabbed my hand and shook it.  Gordon?

We didn’t waste any time. Striding over to his car, Gordon started to take me on a whirlwind tour of the places he had mentioned in his stories.

Some people have questioned how "real" those stories are. This had irked Gordon, so I was lucky enough to get to see all the evidence. Gordon had brought along a camera just to be sure that no one could deny the reality of those stories.

We drove through the city of Canton, towards the location of the giant direct response company SCI – Suarez Corporation Industries. SCI was built by the mail-order expert, Benjamin Suarez, who literally started the business from his basement. He wrote "7 Steps to Freedom II" based on what he learned – it is probably the best mail-order marketing book you can get.

When we reached SCI, we first wandered through the on-site Lindenwold Jewelry shop, which is one of the branches of the SCI empire. Gordon pointed out some of the trinkets that people would buy from Lindenwold through mail-order. Afterwards, we drove around the 150,000 square foot warehouse which stored the mountain of products to be shipped. It was obvious that SCI was hugely successful.

We visited SCI because Gordon has worked in practically every division of SCI, and participated in every aspect of big-time direct marketing. He was personally selected from a seminar by Benjamin Suarez, due to Ben’s recognition of Gordon’s marketing talents.

Gordon had earlier mailed me some of his work from his SCI days. I saw a copy of a full-page ad from USA Today that Gordon wrote, which was an interview between him and Benjamin Suarez about "7 Steps to Freedom II." (You can look this up yourself in a good library – USA Today, October 10 1996, page 7D. You can see Gordon’s name all over it since he is the interviewer.) I've also seen copies of the NPGS Update Hotline, the newsletter for purchasers of "7 Steps to Freedom II," which Gordon wrote. (Gordon is clearly listed in the credits).

By viewing SCI, I had seen for myself the solid evidence of SCI’s marketing success, and the marketing powerhouse that Gordon was involved with. But I was about to see much more.

We hopped into the car and sped towards Benjamin Suarez’s mansion. We could only see it from a distance, as it was on a private security-guarded estate. However, from our vantage-point it was clear that Ben had built a mansion worth a fortune, with its own private lake and golf course. Gordon was showing me more evidence of the power of direct marketing. But the most powerful evidence was still coming.

We drove to the mansion of Rick Suarez, another direct marketing multi-millionaire and Benjamin Suarez’s brother. Rick’s specialty is late-night exercise equipment infomercials. When I saw the mansion, I was stunned.

Rick Suarez’s multi-storey mansion towered over us more like a European castle than like the mid-Western dwelling it really was. Gordon said the mansion cost $6 million to build. I now had no more doubts about the awesome power that could be held through effective direct marketing – which was what Gordon intended.

I had seen the evidence of Gordon’s marketing credentials. But now we were going to travel into the world of Gordon's stories, and I would see the places where they occurred.  I was itching to see the "Center of the Universe," but Gordon told me I would see it all in good time.

We headed out of Canton towards his Uncle Frank Yoders’ farm, from Gordon’s story "Do you want to know your future?" His uncle Frank was Amish, and he had passed away a few years ago, but the farm was still there. Blanketing the land around us as we drove through the countryside was the dark soil which made the farmland here so rich.

When we arrived at the Yoders’ farm, Gordon pointed out the field where he had seen his uncle planting seeds which were to become a rich harvest. This is the source of a powerful metaphor in Gordon’s writings. Those who plant seeds already know what they want to harvest in due time, and as Gordon teaches, this principle holds generally in life – know what you want to harvest before you start to sow.

We then headed towards a large restaurant which served traditional Amish-style meals, which was great, since I was getting pretty hungry. At the restaurant, we both ordered open-faced steak sandwiches coated in rich gravy.  I wondered how I could eat this sandwich with my fingers, since the gravy was everywhere.  Gordon showed me how it was done and saved me from making a fool of myself – grasping our knives and forks, we dug in. Delicious.

After a great meal, we headed to see some more of the places from Gordon’s childhood. We saw the house of Gordon’s cousins, where Gordon and his brother used to go for the summer to work on his relatives’ farm. Gordon told me that he and his brother found the work fun, since it was quite different from what they were used to. His cousins however found it all a big chore since they did it all the time.   Nobody was at the house, but Gordon warned me that there was often a monstrous dog lurking around so we quickly high-tailed it out of there.

I couldn't wait to see the place Gordon calls the CENTER OF THE UNIVERSE. This was the center of his universe as he was growing up, and it’s the center of many of his stories too, such as the story "Are you stuck at the crossroads of life?"   Finally, we started heading towards Cuyahoga Falls, the location of the center of the universe.

It’s the place where Akron, Tallmadge and Cuyahoga Falls meet. Where six higways all come together at a major crossroads. The place where Barny’s Busy Corners was once located. As a child, Gordon lived just a short walk away, at the tiniest house in the area – which they called the "mansion." Just across the street was where Papa Felice‘s Pizza Shop used to stand – it's still a pizza shop now, but the name has changed. We parked near the Pizza shop, got out of the car, and began to walk through the world of Gordon’s childhood.

We crossed the street to the park, where the buildings of his childhood had once stood.   Gordon and I strolled through the park, and he pointed out where his house used to be, where Barny’s Busy Corners was located, and where the barber shop where his father worked had been.

As I strolled around the park, I imagined these buildings just as Gordon had described them, and I tried to imagine the adventures of Gordon’s childhood that he relived through his stories. Gordon showed me where the Sparkle Supermarket had stood where he stole the Snickers, and the window of his house where he had watched with increasing dread as Mr. Morris, the Sparkle Supermarket manager, walk to Gordon’s father’s barber shop, as described in "Stealing the Snickers".

We hopped back in the car and took a short drive down the street to Gordon’s school. The school parking lot was the site of the race of "The World’s Greatest Go-Kart." I saw where the go-karts raced, and where the "World’s Greatest Go-Kart" hit the bump which taught Gordon one of the most important lessons of his life.

Then we drove to Gorge Park, where you can find the beautiful Mary Campbell’s Cave. This is Gordon’s place of retreat and solitude, where there’s the peacefulness to think. It was only a short 10-minute walk through the forest to reach Mary Campbell’s Cave, where in the 19^th Century Mary Campbell was taken by the Indians after she was kidnapped, and where she lived for several years. There Gordon told me about how he had met Mary on one of his walks here, and had recorded her voice late at night – this was starting to get spooky. From there we walked back along the bank of the Cuyahoga River, listening to the peaceful sound of the flowing water as we walked.

We went to the Sheraton Hotel at Cuyahoga Falls where Gordon had organized for me to stay.  Gordon left so I took a nap for an hour. In the evening, Gordon and I met Rick Smith, the "Net Guerilla," and we had dinner at the Sheraton Restaurant, where we could sit overlooking the picturesque cascades of the Cuyahoga River. We spoke at length about various aspects of online business, and our discussions went well into the night….

I learned a lot about Gordon that day. I learned that what he has said in his writings is real. He told me the details, and showed me the sites of important parts of his life. However, I haven’t been able to convey here strongly enough what a warm and friendly guy Gordon really is in person. Online, it is often difficult to tell, but it is refreshing to meet someone who is not only just as nice as the person you were talking to online, but who in fact is even nicer.