Eugene Gordon

1943 - 2025

Eugene Gordon

June 29, 1943 - August 10, 2025

Miami, Florida - Eugene Charles "Gene" Gordon was born in Brooklyn, New York, on June 29, 1943, the youngest of Dorothy Lasky and Maurice Gordon, and the baby of his much older sisters Marlaine and Audrey.

A 60-year resident of South Florida, the father of three, grandfather of four, and great grandfather of one, was married for 34-years to well-known television personality Ileana Bravo. They lived on the La Gorce Country Club on Miami Beach where they are longtime Founder Members and golf lovers.

"Gene used his sharp wit and humor to overcome the mundane. He was a life mate who fought my realism with optimism and achieved the silver lining. How can you ever forget the rainmaker even after the sun comes out?" Ileana Bravo.

Together Gene and Ileana were active with the American Heart Association, American Red Cross, and the American Cancer Society. Gene was Past president of the Miami Philharmonic, founding director of Sunset Commercial Bank, past board trustee for Palmer Trinity prep Academy and past trustee for the Coconut Grove Playhouse.

The young-at-heart 82-year-old was still actively running his financial services companies, saying retirement was for someone else. As Founder and Chief Executive Officer of PensionQuote, Inc. he meticulously oversaw everything with a keen mind. He was considered an industry leader and innovator of design and development of executive pension plans and his firm partnered with some of the country's largest financial institutions.

Young Gene was also antsy to achieve. At an early age, his ambition led him to the Boy Scouts where he rose through the ranks just short of Eagle Scout. As a teenager, the Lincoln High School sophomore started volunteering summers as a member of the Junior Red Cross at Brooklyn's Cumberland Hospital's Emergency Room, never squeamish about the setting, and helping admit patients while receiving school science credits. But medicine was not his path.

His passion was becoming an entrepreneur. So, the 19-year-old worked round the clock to save working days as a suit model in New York City's garment district, and nights as manager of the Café Why Not on MacDougal Street in Greenwich Village in 1962, one of a string of coffeehouses and pseudo nightclubs at the height of the beatniks/hippie cultural movement.

His evolution brought him to South Florida to start his career in financial services with Metropolitan Life Insurance (MetLife) where his meteoric rise catapulted him to become the company's youngest sales manager and the leading national sales manager. As one of the managing partners of The Coral Gables Ordinary Agency in 1968, a sales force of twenty-something "Whiz Kids," the young executives crushed premium growth records nationwide.

He trained as a Qualified Plans Specialist and developed a pilot marketing and design system that helped launch MetLife's entry into the national marketing of corporate pension plans. But the brilliant young gun grew restless of the corporate restrictions. He was a maverick whose creativity led him to innovate in an industry of black and white.

With the expertise he honed, he went out on his own in 1972 to form Independent Pension Services which grew to a team of more than 100 specialists made up of actuaries, tax attorneys, CPAs and pension administrators. The company was ahead of its time, reinventing leveraged split-funded defined benefit pension plans.

Gene's creative mind was still buzzing when he launched one of the first term life insurance shopping services in the 1980's because he thought the average consumer should also have access to tax advantages. Today LifeQuote.com is part of his legacy an online platform that has provided coverage to hundreds of thousands of families nationwide.

Gene's love of business and invention never left him. "Why retire?" He said, "you have to do what you do and be who you are until the end," lecturing much younger friends who were frustrated mid-career.

This inimitable man's life lessons will resonate deeply with his family and friends. Simple profundities that go to the core "I am still chasing golf's sparse moments of reward that keep you humbled, yet always one shot away from glory. And, I am still excited every day about new ideas and the endless opportunities in business, one idea away from newfound glory."

Gene passed on August 10, 2025. There will be a Celebration of Life planned in the Fall.