Dunster Resident Karen Gordon Dies in Weekend Auto Crash

Karen Avra Gordon '84, a Sociology concentrator in Dunster House, died yesterday morning at Massachusetts General Hospital following an automobile accident early Sunday.

Gordon was driving east on Storrow Drive at about 9 a.m. Sunday when her car went out of control and struck a bridge abutment at the Arlington Street exit, Officer Frank L. Muolo of the M.D.C. police said yesterday. She was alone in the car and no other vehicles were involved in the accident.

The funeral will be held tomorrow at 9:30 a.m. at the Levine Chapel on 470 Harvard Street in Brookline. A shuttle bus will leave at 9 a.m. from Harvard Hillel on 74 Mount Auburn Street to take students to the funeral.

The daughter of Dr. Roy Gordon, professor of Chemistry, she was born on Dec. 10, 1962 and graduated from Buckingham. Browne and Nichols School in Cambridge.

A member of the photography staff of the Harvard Indpendent from the first semester of freshman year, she was "into photography and very talented," Sandra E. Breitbart '84, her roommate this year, said, adding, "she did some of her own developing and processing."

"She was the type of person who didn't have time to be sick, who was always doing something," Breitbart said. "Every minute of her day was productive and she was more organized than most people," she added.

"She was a quiet girl and shy, but a very sensitive student," Mary E. Vogel, a non-resident tutor at Dunster House and leader of Gordon's Sociology tutorial, observed. "She was interested in the Cambridge community and excited about a paper on the role of the University in the Cambridge community," Vogel said.

"I think that she had a great deal of vitality and was a person of social conscience," Rabbi Ben-Zion Gold of Harvard Hillel, who had known Gordon since she was a child, said. "She was a very hopeful person," he added.

"It's a real tragedy," Stephen R. Lundeen, Dunster House senior tutor, said. "She was well-liked in the house and seemed to be a very fine student. What can I say? It's hard to believe."