Good Samaritan Gordon's quest begins 40 years on

MORE than 40 years ago Gordon Croston threw a lifeline to Victor Tanice, a destitute young Nigerian he met stranded in Spain.
Now Gordon, a retired entrepreneur living in Shellfield Road, Marshside, is trying to trace Victor, who he helped on his way to a better life but hasn’t seen since.

It was while holidaying with a neighbour in April 1966 that Gordon, now 86, came across Victor in the port of Algeciras.
“I was waiting for the ferry to Gibraltar when a young man came up to me,� remembers Gordon. “He had hitch-hiked all the way from Lagos and was in a hell of a state.�
“He told me he was trying to get to Liverpool, and when I told him I came from there he looked at me as if he had seen God.
“Victor said he had been in Spain for nearly a year and no-one would give him food or money.�
Gordon, the son of a Liverpool publican, bought 18- year-old Victor – whose homeland had just been engulfed in civil war – a ticket for the crossing and gave him £5.
But on arrival on Gibraltar, immigration officers would not allow Victor entry – a problem Gordon called on his contacts to resolve.
The Catholic padre of Gibraltar, Father Henry Border, was a friend of Gordon’s, who he knew via a Catholic priest in Liverpool.
Fr Border was called to the immigration office and negotiated Victor’s entry, before taking him to Gibraltar cathedral for a bath and new clothes.
Gordon said: “There was a boat that ran between Marseilles and the Rock, whose crew were always in Fr Border’s confessional.
“Fr Border called in a few favours, and they fitted him up with official papers and agreed to drop him at the British consular office in Marseilles.�
That was the last that Gordon – who was then working as a gemologist and trader in precious and semi-precious stones – saw of Victor.

Back in Liverpool he received a letter of gratitude from an address in Paris, saying: “You are somebody that I must not do away for the rest of my life.�
Another letter arrived dated January 1969, addressed to “My dear saviour�, in which Victor told of how he was married with two children, lived in a studio in Paris and had recently visited London. “I wish I could visit you but time did not allow, oh alas!� it said.
In the early 1970s Gordon’s neighbours saw an African man come to his home while he was away on business, but he has never heard from Victor since.

Without the time to trace Victor during his working life, Gordon has written to Dr Christopher Kolade of the Nigerian High Commission for assistance and is now awaiting a reply.
But successful or not in his quest, Gordon has the satisfaction of knowing he had been a true Good Samaritan.
“I was brought up to help others,� said Gordon, the eldest of seven children.
“If you can’t do something for yourself, do it for another.�