The office still carries traces of Dan Combs.
Old framed photos rest against the walls as staff sort through decades of memories. Two fish tanks — once Combs’ — hum softly near the meeting table at the Perry Township office located at 1010 S. Walnut St. Even now, township staff members come in daily to feed the fish.
Dan Combs, Perry Township trustee since 1986, died Jan. 6. He oversaw township assistance, such as financial help with housing or food, in Perry Township, one of 11 in Monroe County, which includes the southern half of Bloomington.
Into the space walks Leon Gordon, the newly appointed Perry Township trustee finishing Combs’ term. The Monroe County Democratic Party selected Leon Gordon as the new Perry Township trustee Jan. 31 through a vacancy caucus.
“My name is Leon Ithream-Fortunatis Gordon,” he said, spelling out the 17-letter middle name his father gave him. “It’s partially from the Bible and then Fortunatis is Latin, fortunate. But it’s a servant of the people. It’s what I would gather in. There’s power in the name.”
As a child, Gordon avoided using it. Now, he embraces it. The name, he said, became something to live up to. Taking up a life of service is the best way to honor both his name and his upbringing, he said.
Gordon said he grew up “a poor kid in the South Side of Chicago,” in neighborhoods where questions about inequality lingered early in his mind.
“Because as a kid, I grew up in the neighborhoods where you look around and you're like, why is it this way?” he said.
He attended the University of Chicago as an English major on the pre-med track, a Division III football player and track athlete. He took several philosophy courses that reshaped his worldview and graduated in 2007.
“Being exposed to philosophy at the University of Chicago changed my life,” he said. “That place changed my life. It brought me into the classics where I read all philosophers from the Enlightenment period and then before, like Jean-Jacques Rousseau, he's like my favorite.”
After college, he joined Teach For America, a full time, paid opportunity to teach in under-resourced classrooms, and taught at an all-boys charter school in Chicago. He said he designed curriculum and created a classroom that treated students as “young writers, thinkers and philosophers.”
After teaching, Gordon began to think about whether he needed to stay in education or change gears.
But teaching alone did not feel like enough.
“I see all these other things that are influencing it (education). And so, I need to go higher,” he said. “I need to go do more.”
The realization led him into the field of learning sciences at Northwestern University, where he earned his master’s degree in 2010. He later attended Indiana University and graduated with a doctoral degree in learning sciences.
He said he met one of his greatest teachers at IU, Phil Carspecken, a now-retired professor in counseling and education psychology. Gordon said he taught critical qualitive inquiry.
While completing his doctorate, Gordon immersed himself in Bloomington’s community work. He started at New Hope for Families, a family shelter that provides emergency shelter and early learning programs, as an overnight site supervisor, cleaning and assisting families experiencing homelessness. Over time, he grew into leadership roles and later stepped in as a senior housing specialist.
Gordon said he later worked with the Bloomington Housing Authority, which provides housing assistance in Monroe County, and other local organizations, building what he calls “circles of influence” around housing stability and development.
Gordon also served on several boards and committees, including as treasurer and secretary for the South-Central Housing Network Board, vice chair of the South-Central Community Action Program, vice chair of the Indiana Balance of State Continuum of Care Board and member of the Statewide Capital Projects Initiative Committee for Indiana United Ways.
His life during those years at New Hope mirrored the challenges many families he served were facing, he said. As a graduate student raising four daughters with his wife — his high school sweetheart — Gordon relied on income-based housing and public programs to make ends meet.
“And those are programs that I knew because my mother was able to raise me utilizing them and getting me to the opportunities I have therein by keeping us stable,” he said.
That lived experience informs how he approaches policy. Stability, he said, is “the name of the game.”
Gordon said he left his position at New Hope on Friday to step into the trustee role.
Gordon had been preparing to run for trustee even before Comb’s passing. Friends and colleagues encouraged him to consider running for the next term, beginning in 2027, when they learned Combs planned to retire after his term ended this year.
“I got some ideas,” he said. “I would like to run for that. But I kept it close to the vest because, you know, I just wasn't quite sure that I wanted to step in that direction or maybe how to or knowing that it was an elected office.”
Rather than making sweeping changes to the township, Gordon said he is there to learn and wants to be supportive. He describes himself as a “learning scientist” who believes effective change requires understanding systems and people within them before trying to reshape them.
“They are the experts,” he said of the township staff, many of whom have worked in the office for decades. “And I hope to just continue to learn.”
At the same time, the township faces uncertainty. New state legislation could cause small townships to lose their governing independence. Consolidation discussions loom in the Indiana statehouse with proposed House Bill 1315 and Senate Bill 270.
Gordon plans to stay attuned to legislative developments and collaborate with other township leaders in Monroe County. He said this week, the Monroe County Township Association will have a luncheon to get together and plan for any legislative changes.
Gordon said his early priorities include strengthening preventative services to keep families from losing their homes due to affordability issues, increasing awareness of available assistance and expanding pantry support.
He said Combs documented the township’s response to a recent tornado, earning recognition in the statehouse. Gordon hopes to continue highlighting the office's behind-the-scenes work in new ways.
“I’m not coming in a blazing change,” he said. “I want to be able to say I can earn my own term.”
At home, Gordon is a father to four daughters — a college freshman, a high school senior, an eighth grader and a first grader. He speaks of them with pride and humor, from college applications to cheek-pinching that is no longer permitted. Parenthood, he said, keeps him grounded.
Gordons says he plans to run for re-election in the upcoming primary May 5.
“That is my life plan right now, to be here in this office, to finish this term and to build a foundation that defines my term, as trustee here,” he said.
Back in the office, the fish tanks remain, tended carefully by staff who knew Combs well. The walls are slowly clearing of Comb’s pictures. Gordon is still settling in, still learning the rhythms of a space shaped by four decades of one man’s leadership.
But if his middle name is any indication, Gordon said service isn’t new, it is simply the next step.
