By Kendrick Marshall
Chicago Sun Times
Copyright 2006 Chicago Sun-Times, Inc.
All Rights Reserved
A prominent Chicago attorney and his wife were killed early Saturday when a fast-moving fire broke out in their Lincoln Park home.
Mark and Rachelle Gordon would have celebrated their 33rd wedding anniversary Saturday.
Instead, the couple were being mourned by friends and relatives who said they were heartbroken by the loss of two people who were devoted to their family and to the community.
“When you talk to someone the night before and make plans for the morning, and then two of your best friends are gone literally in a puff of smoke, it becomes impossible to comprehend,” said Marilyn Katz, a longtime friend of the Gordons.
“I’m just saddened that they are no longer with us,” said Mark Gordon’s law partner Scott Glickson. “It’s like I lost a member of my family.”
Mark, 55, was a successful attorney who worked as an IT specialist at the McGuireWoods law firm. He was also involved with many local organizations, including formerly serving on the board at Children’s Memorial Hospital. Rachelle, 56, whose friends called her “Shelly,” was a University of Chicago graduate student who later became a writer and part-time teacher at Roycemore summer camp in Evanston.
The fire started around 3:40 a.m. Saturday in the basement of the couple’s two-story house in the 600 block of West Fullerton. It quickly spread up the staircase and to a second-floor bathroom, where the Gordons were found together, “probably seeking refuge from the blaze,” Chicago Fire Department spokesman Larry Langford said.
There were smoke detectors in the home that were wired to a security system, but they were not working at the time of the fire, Langford said.
The Gordons’ son, Michael, 18, who will be a senior at Roycemore High School in Evanston this fall, was not at the home when the fire started. Family members say he left around midnight to hang out with friends. He is now staying with his grandparents in Highland Park.
The cause of the fire is still under investigation, authorities said.