Dexter Jordan passed away Feb. 6. (Contributed)

At least in the hunting world, there is little doubt that for a lot of years Dexter Jordan was Tyler’s, and to an extent, a larger portion of East Texas’ MVP.

Dexter, who passed away Feb. 6, was for decades Tyler’s go-to guy for gun repairs, cleaning and set-ups.

“I am not a gunsmith. I am a gun repairman,” the gentle giant native East Texan explained to me years ago. The difference, he said, was he did not build guns. He just fixed them and got them back into the field working properly.

Jordan was born just outside Lufkin in the Kelty community. His dad was in the construction business, and it was expected he would eventually join the business. Truth be told, it was not where his heart was.

“I hated construction,” Jordan said. He especially disliked framing and even more, plumbing, a side of the business he joked made him quit biting his fingernails.

At 14, Dexter started shadowing a friend’s father who was a gun repairman. It was a profession found in almost every small town in Texas back in the day. Like Dexter, his friend did not care about the family business, so Dexter was a welcome addition around the shop.

After marrying his wife, Sue, they moved to Tyler where he went to work at the Kelly-Springfield tire plant. It was a Saturday trip downtown to Mac’s Gun Shop that got Jordan into the gun business, first parttime before later going fulltime.

“It was really busy, and Richard was frustrated trying to get a gun fixed for a customer. He asked me if I could fix it, and I said I could look at it. It only took a couple of minutes and I said ‘Here you go.’

“He looked at it and asked if I had time to work on some more,” Jordan recalled.

That was the beginning of a 17-year collaboration between the two. When Jordan announced he was going out on his own and would be opening a shop in a backroom of his home, it was a friendly change because Jordan agreed to Mac’s one request, that he not advertise.

That was Ok with Dexter who had built up a following and was adding customers through referrals. However, there was a bump in the road when Mac came across a business card for Jordan’s gun repair. Upset he had broken his word, Mac called Dexter about it. The problem was Jordan knew nothing about it. Turns out one of his customers, hoping to help along the new business, took it upon himself to print and distribute the cards, and the crisis was adverted.

I don’t know when I first met Dexter. I just know it was about the time whatever repair he had done would result in a phone call telling me the gun was ready and to “just bring me $20.”

Eventually it went up to $40 and finally got around to $60.

Walking into his shop was always fun because of the rows of guns that would be lining the walls waiting to be fixed, cleaned or picked up. There were stacks of barrels and spare parts neatly placed around the shop. It was often the classroom for an apprentice learning the trade.

Spend much time there, which you were going to because Dexter always had a tale or five to tell, and a parade of hunters was going to call about their gun or come through the door to pick it up.

I knew what a gem we had in Jordan one day when I took him a new over/under shotgun that was not working right. I had called the manufacturer, who gave me the name of the nearest factory gunsmith. After talking to them and getting a quote for fixing a new gun, I stopped by Dexter’s house.

“I know what it is,” he said, and within minutes he had the gun broken down on the bench. The next thing I knew he had a small part laying on a flat surface and was tapping it with a hammer. After a few whacks, he put the gun back together and said, “Just leave me $40.”

The shotgun has worked right ever since.

More recently it was my interest in used guns that took me to Dexter’s shop.

“Why do you keep bringing me these old guns,” he admonished me on a visit late last year, before he spent hours looking for and finding parts to make them work again.

Along with his gun work, Dexter was also an avid hunter, and by all accounts an expert shot with a shotgun. He was also one of the last people I knew to have a brace of birddogs in his backyard for quail hunter.

Back in the day he was also a Little League coach for his son, Bradley’s team, and proudly kept a team photo on his desk as a reminder for years.

He and Sue were also very active in their churches, first Southern Oaks Baptist, where he once roped me into judging a wild game dinner competition, and more recently Friendly Baptist.

And it was at those churches that Jordan realized he did not hate construction work after all. Years ago, he was coerced at the last minute by church members to join in on a mission trip to rebuild a ramshackle church in Arkansas.

He described it as a life-changing event, one that for the remainder of his life resulted in similar missions throughout the Americas using skills learned in his youth to uplift others.

Dexter was a local treasure.

—Contact Steve Knight at outdoor@tylerpaper.com