Even in his own garden, Gordon Kilgore doesn’t stay put for long.

“I figure if I’m going to be down here, I might as well be doing something,” he says, pulling weeds and inspecting for bugs as he settles among the flowers for a quick photograph.

Kilgore, 83, is far more comfortable on the other side of the camera. He was already a husband, father and successful businessman in his 30s when he first bought a Pentax Spotmatic and began to teach himself photography. Unsatisfied with his initial efforts, Kilgore upgraded to a Minolta with autofocus.

“It didn’t help a lot,” he says. “My pictures were not very good, so I started reading books and going to workshops, and I learned the mechanics of it.”

In the 1980s, a chance encounter led to the publication of his work in a magazine, and soon he had built a lucrative side business selling stock images and doing custom work for various publications and real estate developers. An avid traveler, Kilgore began offering his photography skills to cruise lines in exchange for free passage. To date, his hobby has taken him to 170 countries around the globe.

It also has partially funded his 136 river and ocean cruises, which account for the 1,569 days – the equivalent of four years – he has spent on the water.

That pattern of pragmatic interest, hard work and success has repeated itself many times over in Kilgore’s life. The retired entrepreneur is a Life Scout, an accomplished bowler and skier, swimmer, diver, woodworker and former motorcycle racer. He’s an expert shot with a rifle, can operate a tractor with a loader, and has experience in everything from installing flooring and wallpaper to gunsmithing to beekeeping, taxidermy, canoeing and coin collecting.

Unlike some of his generation, Kilgore has embraced the technological age including computers and digital photography. And he’s a firm believer in investing for the long haul. In 1983, he bought a pressure washer and 500 feet of heavy duty, professional-grade garden hose. The meticulously cared-for washer lives in the garage of his Sharpsburg home, and the hose is stored on a reel and never left outside in the hot sun or freezing temperatures.

“I daresay that there are not many people who haven’t had to replace a water hose in 38 years,” says Kilgore, who advocates buying quality products, taking care of them and investing the money it would take to replace them.

That advice applies across many areas of his life. Kilgore invested the money he earned from two jobs over two summers into an engagement ring for his college sweetheart, Margaret. They met at what is now Georgia State University, where Kilgore wooed his future bride on dates in a “very used,” oil-guzzling 1949 Ford he’d bought from his uncle for $450.

His marketing studies had honed his persuasion skills. “He finally persuaded me that I needed to marry him,” says Margaret. But the gorgeous emerald-cut diamond came as a surprise, and she told him so. His response, she recalls: “Do you have any idea how many shotguns I could have bought for what that ring cost?”

The Kilgores have been married 61 years, but their marriage didn’t start off smoothly. The U.S. Army plunked them down in Arizona, far from friends and family and homesick first-time parents to a colicky honeymoon baby. By 1963 they were back in Georgia, preparing to open a men’s clothing and shoe store in Fairburn. But there was one problem.

“I did not know anything about selling either clothing or shoes,” says Gordon.

He learned to fit and order shoes and how to manage a business from a LaGrange storekeeper in exchange for sweeping the floor, arranging stock and selling merchandise. He made a similar arrangement with the owner of a men’s clothing store in Decatur. Within a few years, Kilgore’s store was thriving and by 1978, he was ready for a change. By then a father of two and an experienced businessman, he sold the store for 30 pinball machines and some cash.

In the ensuing years, a lucrative game business and single-family rental homes provided a good living for the family. That income, along with good saving habits, which began when 6-year-old Gordon Kilgore sold turnip greens for 10 cents a bundle to neighbors, have allowed the retired couple to travel extensively in their golden years.

Those travels have given Gordon the opportunity to explore the world through his camera lens, and he’s found his share of human universality during these adventures.

In rural India, he unknowingly headed down the path to the “ladies bathroom” area of a broom sage patch before a local waved him off. He once wandered a little too far into the wrong section of the La Boca area of Buenos Aires and was assaulted by two men who robbed him of a camera and tripod.

But that didn’t discourage him from spending the day with a stranger in Scotland. Gordon was exploring an area on his own while the rest of his group was on a tour when a local man asked if he was going to visit the cemetery. Gorden accepted a ride to tour the cemetery and the ruins of an ancient abbey, plus an invitation to have tea and meet the stranger’s dogs at his home before returning to his cruise ship.

The world traveller says it’s not difficult to find someone who speaks English in just about any city in the world, but he resorts to animated gestures and the assistance of tour guides in rural areas.

In every city, he finds pockets of rundown areas, which he prefers because they are more photogenic and the people who occupy them are less aloof than their wealthy counterparts, says Gordon. “They’re just more down to earth, and that seems to be true all over the world,” he adds.

His and Margaret’s request to see a farm in rural Tajikistan turned into an invitation to partake in a Sunday picnic dinner with the farmer’s family. The meal was reminiscent of a Southern church’s dinner on the grounds.

“It was better than any paid excursion,” says Gordon.

In most countries, especially in rural areas, it’s considered a treat to have American visitors, the couple has found. When Gorden was traveling Tibet by Jeep, he was invited into a home and offered butter tea, a concoction of yak milk and tea.

In Russia, the Kilgores were invited into homes along the river path they were traveling to share tea – minus the yak milk. It’s typical of the experiences they have had in their travels.

“People are the same all over this world, and most of them are good people,” says Margaret. NCM