American stage and screen Actor. Born Rufus Carl Gordon, Jr., from a young age he was known by his middle name and grew up in the Bedford-Stuyvesant section of Brooklyn. He spent four years in the Air Force, as an aircraft mechanic during the Korean War. After the Military he briefly attended Brooklyn College, left school to look for employment and quickly found himself back in the rut of working unsatisfying warehouse and factory jobs. Not satisfied with the direction his life was taking he went through a mid life crisis having had two divorces and an endless line of dead end jobs. After much contemplation he was led to try acting. Early in his career he enrolled in the Gene Frankel Theater Workshop. There, Mr. Gordon was not only the oldest student, and only African-American, but was also the only individual without a college degree. Over time he started getting offers of work. In 1967, he made his professional stage debut in Douglas Turner Ward's "Days of Absence/Happy Ending". Through out his career he appeared in more than 30 productions of the Negro Ensemble Company. His career in Theatre Broadway appearances include the Pulitzer Prize winning play "The Piano Lesson", Ma Rainey's Black Bottom, Ain't Supposed to Die a Natural Death, and The Great White Hope. His first major film role was in 1973, in Ossie Davis's action thriller, "Gordon's War". Mr. Gordon's breakout role was as the patriarch on "Roc," the situation comedy about a working-class black family in Baltimore, broadcast on the Fox network for three seasons starting in 1991, ending in 1993. He worked steadily in television, after "Roc" making guest appearances on 'ER,' 'The Practice', 'Law and Order', 'JAG' and 'Nash Bridges'. At the time of his death, one of his last projects was filming a role in the movie 'Somebody's Hero'. Mr. Gordon died of non-Hodgkin's lymphoma.