Issue link: http://read.dmtmag.com/i/366055
T he picturesque Craftsman bungalow in Parkdale, Oregon, where Gordy Sato lives, used to be his grandparents' home. In the early 1900s, his grandfather Todao Sato, who was an apple grower in Nagano Prefecture, Japan, came with his wife, Shin, to the Pacific Northwest looking for a better life and established a 25-acre orchard at Parkdale, a few miles south of Hood River. Gordy, dressed neatly in a green checked shirt and shorts, and sporting a farmer's tan, sits at a glass- topped table in the cozy kitchen, colorfully decorated with pear-theme paintings, sculptures, and other objets d'art. "I love this lifestyle," says Gordy, once a top salesman for Christian Dior menswear. Gordy recounts that during World War II, his grandparents and his father, Ray, being of Japanese origin, were sent to internment camps. Neighboring orchardist John Cooper took care of the Sato orchard as his own, and they were able to return to it after the war. Ray earned a bachelor's degree in horticulture from Oregon State University and eventually took over the orchard from his parents. The orchard had started out with apples and pears, but Ray removed the apples and expanded it to 150 acres. "He had a reputation of being one of the best farmers," Gordy says. "His pride and joy was the orchard." City life Gordy and his sisters, Peggy and Sally, worked at the orchard while they were growing up, but they were "all into clothes and city life," as Gordy puts it. Hood River, a former logging town, had yet to become a lively tourist destination. After graduating with a bachelor's degree in business administration from OSU, Gordy found a job with the local telephone company. A year later, he fell and broke his arm while mushroom hunting and left the phone company for a temporary job as a sales clerk at the Portland department store Meier & Frank. He was asked to stay on as a management trainee and became manager of the menswear department. When Nordstrom's opened in downtown Portland, he moved there and was then recruited as a sales representative for John Henry menswear. "It was amazing," Gordy recalls, "because sales rep was the ultimate." From there, he became the Northwest representative for Christian Dior menswear and flew to New York to meet the national sales team and company president. "Here I am, a farmer's son," he says. "Growing up, we didn't even get to go to the Oregon coast because we were busy raking brush." He had an instinct for style and a talent for sales. In 1981, he was named Christian Dior salesman of the year and went to spend a week with the company in Paris. In the 1980s, when Dior began eliminating sales representatives because of more centralized buying, Gordy went to work for a family company that made stylish uniforms for hotels and airlines. He represented them for 11 years, but found it stressful because of frequent mistakes in the orders when they were delivered. The work was demanding. On sales trips to Hawaii, he never saw the pool or the beach. Time for a change One morning in 1995, after returning from Hawaii, he got up and decided to go back to the farm. He was in his early 40s and felt it was the perfect time for a change, though he did worry about not being mechanically minded. He phoned his father with the news. "My dad was so happy. His first question was, 'Where are you going to live?' " His grandparents' house, which was next door to his parents' home, was vacant, so Ray fixed it up for him. "My dad was running around telling everybody, 'Gordy's coming back. He's a city guy, and he doesn't know anything about farming.' " Gordy had only worked in the orchard during summer vaca- tions and knew nothing about what happened in the winter or spring. He'd never pruned. He was determined to learn. He went to the library to read all he could about fruit growing and attended all the horticultural meet- ings. He worked alongside their employees, doing everything they did. "I wanted to prove myself to the other farmers," he says. "For the first seven to eight years, no one saw me because I was in the 20 SEPTEMBER 2014 GOOD FRUIT GROWER www.goodfruit.com Pears For the first seven years after returning to the orchard, Gordy Sato did nothing but farm with his father. At right, his orchard has a spectacular view of Mount Hood. From Paris TO PEARS Once a top Dior sales rep, Gordy Sato tops the pools with his pears. by Geraldine Warner