The Grand Dame of the Serengeti

She had her doubters, of course, including an organizer of our African tour group. They said she wasn’t up for it. At 82, she was too elderly, too frail, just not safari material. 

But they didn’t know Christine Gorman.

They didn’t know that she was an Indiana farm girl who attended Purdue University, where she met her husband, Howie. Raising three children, Chris also helped run the family candy distribution business from the couple’s master bedroom.

They didn’t know that after Howie died suddenly in 2018, Chris was left alone in the couple’s Bend, Ore, house with the prized river views. He’d left her just before renovations were completed in the retirement dream home where they were supposed to spend the rest of their lives together.

But Chris stood tall. She was 6-foot-1, after all, a dynamo who led her life with a certain derring-do, with white hair she always kept short, like Amelia Earhart.

She could hold her ground on any African safari and everywhere else.

And she showed them. She showed them all.

In late 2021, my friend Tom Gorman called with a proposal: He’d long fantasized of taking an African safari to photograph wild creatures on the plains of East Africa, but his wife didn’t share his dream.

So he suggested we take one last escapade together. We’d already had so many adventures, working together as reporters at the Los Angeles Times, teaching journalism at UNLV in Las Vegas, where I once took Tom to an all-nude strip club and playfully swiped the dollar bills he’d laid on the stage for my own bemusement.

Africa wasn’t on my bucket list, but how could I say no? 

We started making plans in the grip of covid, when many people feared going to the corner store, let alone taking an international galavant. A few days later, I received another call from Tom.

Would I mind if his sister in law, Chris, who’d married his older brother Howie, came along? When he’d told her about the trip, she gushed with enthusiasm. She wanted to go. Would I mind?

I’d never even met Chris. Wasn’t this supposed to a buddy trip where we rolled the dice Vegas-style?

“Oh, and she’s 82,” Tom said. “But she’s feisty.”

“Yeah, sure,” I said finally. “Why not?”

It was one of the best decisions I’ve made in my life.

The plan was for us to meet in San Francisco, where I live, and then fly together to Kenya and Tanzania. I instantly recognized Chris at the airport. That elegant bearing. That gleaming white hair. That confident stride.

By then, she’d already faced major blowback regarding the trip. For weeks, we’d all been buried in a mountain of bureaucratic paperwork, filling out visa applications and a host of covid-related health tests, each with its own hassle and deadline.

And we did everything on our own. After we groused among ourselves, making numerous phone calls to foreign embassies and domestic health offices, Chris took the matter up with a trip organizer.

We were already paying a fortune for this venture, so why couldn’t they help us with this paperwork burden? That was Chris. She was a businesswoman. She didn’t suffer fools.

Her gripe brought immediate pushback: Suddenly, trip planners suggested that Chris was too old to go on a foreign safari. They just weren’t equipped to accommodate a woman her age. There were insurance considerations.

Tom and I stepped forward: Don’t worry about Chris; she was in our hands. What we didn’t say was that Chris didn’t need us. She made friends. The other safari goers eventually looked up to her as the grand dame of our African adventure.

Howie Gorman stood six-foot-four. One day he brought home a lanky college girlfriend who could easily match his loping stride. As the story goes, he’d first seen her walking across campus and quickened his pace to catch up to her.

They had three children — two boys and a girl — and for years Howie worked in the aerospace industry while Chris raised the kids. Then came an opportunity for them to join forces. Howie took over The Candy Box, his father’s candy distribution business, that included the Jelly Belly jellybean brand.

For Chris and Howie, everything changed when President Ronald Reagan suddenly developed a sweet tooth for the candy.

Jelly Bellies came in blueberry, cherry and coconut but the president liked the licorice-flavored jelly best. He ordered nearly four tons of the candy for the 1981 Inaugural festivities. Sales skyrocketed. Howie couldn’t keep up.

So they converted the master bedroom of their home in Tustin California, into an office where Chris handled the orders while Howie took to the road. They attended candy fairs and wined-and-dined major clients. Together, they made their mark.

Years later, in 2018, after Howie died of cancer, Chris moved to the first floor of the home in Bend to avoid the stairs and developed a cadre of friends who looked in on her, helped keep her spirits up.

For Chris, Howie was the love of her life. She wistfully told tales of the life they’d had together, how they’d played golf and were active in their church. She was a great cook. He played saxophone in a band and Chris was his biggest fan.

Howie was her Superman, her Lancelot, her life partner.

And then he was gone. 

International travel during covid was a nightmare, especially for a trio of senior citizens with one fully-intact memory between us. At each document checkpoint, we scrambled to locate forms we’d seemed to have safely clutched in hand only moments before.

Chris availed herself to wheelchairs in airports to save her strength. After each bureaucratic way station, I’d looked back to see Chris there in her chair, smiling, loving this frenetic life of travel.

Joining a dozen other safari goers, we took our meals together. Every night — because our camp in the Serengeti was rife with predators— we required escorts to walk back to our cabins. The staff scrambled to take Chris’ hand to walk her through the dark. She loved the attention; she called them her guys.

We looked after Chris, both Tom and I, not that she really needed it. I’d escort her out of the jeep or on walks in camp. I think it helped cement our friendship.

As we cruised the savannah in our green safari jeeps, Chris sat up front with the driver, keeping him company, holding on for dear life when the going got bumpy, while Tom and I manned the back, popping our heads out the rooftop, scrambling to get pictures of wildlife that included elephants, cheetahs, lion prides and Thompson gazelles.

I often turned my attentions to Chris, prompting her to tell more stories about Howie. Tom had warned her I was an incorrigible rake, so she would be prepared for what came next.

I told her I wished we’d met a half century ago. Then I’d ask, “Chris, will you marry me?”

Of course she’d already met my wife and knew I was being a shameless flirt, but I always loved the look on her face when she considered the sacred institution of marriage, which to her meant her Howie and nobody else.

“I’m afraid I can’t,” she’d finally say. 

“I know, Chris,” I’d say. “Once you’ve had the best, why settle for the worst?”

Then she’d smile that lovely Christine Gorman smile.

After the safari, I’d call her often. I said she’d lent a unmistakable grace to the entire African adventure, and that I believed I’d made a bosom buddy.

Then she moved into a care facility in Bend that challenged her sense as an independent woman.

On a visit to Bend, another friend and I stopped to visit Chris at her new lodgings, which she had decorated with mementos from her life. When I noticed the gray-haired gentleman who lived across the hall, I gave her a nudge.

“He’s cute,” I said. “But he’s certainly no Howie.”

As we walked down a long hallway, ready to leave, I locked arms with Chris and began humming the wedding theme. She laughed girlishly. She suffered me.

Then I gave Chris a big hug. It was to be our last.

We said goodbye in a cafeteria that was serving dinner. I took Chris’ hand and called out to several diners. “Gentleman,” I said. “We have a new ingenue here. I’d like you all to come by and say hello.”

Outside, my buddy asked, “why do you do that?”

“Oh, she loved it,” I answered.

Looking back, I certainly hope she did. It was my was way to celebrate a femme fatale who’d lost someone precious, but who chose to carry on. She handled the demands of that safari, and every other challenge she encountered, in her own intrepid way.

The other day, Tom called to say that Chris had passed away. She’d been moved to a facility in Sacramento to be closer to her youngest son. Then her health began to fail.

And then, just like Howie before her, she was gone.

Not gone, exactly, but free. Free to be with Howie. Free to gallivant like those Thompson gazelles on the wild plains of Africa.

In her own unique Chris Gorman style — with an elegant bearing and confident stride. And that gleaming white hair.