Longtime FMCA member Gordon Groene, F47166, passed away on March 21, 2016. The Groene byline has been familiar to Family Motor Coaching readers for decades. Gordon’s wife, Janet, began writing the “Cooking On The Go” column in the June 1978 issue, and it still appears bimonthly; Gordon shared a byline on many “Full-Timer’s Primer” columns, which ran in FMC from 1981 to early 2016.
The Groenes also produced more than 25 books ranging from travel guidebooks to camping, boating, and aviation titles. These include their guide to full-timing, Living Aboard Your RV, currently in its fourth edition.
The Groenes were self-proclaimed “mavericks” who enjoyed a lifestyle others only dream of. While in their early 30s, Gordon left his career as a pilot for multinational corporations and the couple began full-timing.
First came their sailboat, a 29-foot Danish-built sloop. Then in 1969, the Groenes spied a 21-foot-long, 90-inch-wide 1970 Fan-Hanomag motorhome on a car dealer’s lot. The unit, built in Indiana by the Fan Trailer Company, consisted of a Fan travel trailer attached to a German Hanomag truck chassis and powered by a 55-horsepower diesel engine. The 4,490-pound RV was “as plug ugly as they come,” the couple wrote in a 1999 “Memory Lane” column in FMC. And they had to have it. For 10 happily homeless years, Gordon and Janet wintered in the tropics onboard their sailboat and spent summers traveling in the Fan-Hanomag.
Although the couple planned to return to “real life” in time, Janet’s background as a journalist and Gordon’s talent for photography led them to develop a successful joint career as a travel writer-photographer team. Writing assignments took them all over the world, often to travel in RVs or self-drive boats.
When the Groenes settled down in Florida, they became part-timers again and continued to travel in the Fan. Scrupulously maintained by Gordon, the RV was in use until he died. No other fully operating Fan-Hanomag units are known to exist.
In Gordon’s memory, Janet has donated the RV to the Tallahassee Antique Car Museum (850-942-0137; www.tacm.com). The museum is operated by Devoe Moore and his wife, Shirley McEwan Moore, F430238. An avid RVer, Shirley often travels with her six grandchildren onboard.
Tax-deductible donations for setting up and displaying the Fan-Hanomag unit can be earmarked “Groene/FMCA” and addressed to Yesterday’s Artifacts Inc., TACM, 6800 Mahan Drive, Tallahassee, FL 32308.