Gordon Wayne Mckellips Jr.

Gordon Wayne McKellips, Jr. passed away on January 8, 2022. Wayne, an Arizona native, was born on February 6, 1941 in Phoenix. For the first few years of his life he lived in Mesa where his father and grandfather were engaged in the citrus business, and then his family moved to Phoenix. He attended West High School, graduating in 1958, and then Duke University in Durham, N.C., where he earned his BA in 1962, majoring in Business Administration. When he was a senior, he met his future bride Joslyn (“Lyn”) Marie Guerin, who was attending nursing school in Durham. Wayne returned to Arizona to attend the University of Arizona law school where he earned a Juris Doctor degree in 1965. He convinced Lyn to transfer to nursing school in Arizona, too, and the day after her graduation in 1964, she and Wayne were married.

Wayne had a long career in the law and as a land developer; immediately after law school in 1965, he joined Carson Messinger PLLC, one of Arizona’s oldest law firms, and spent his entire career there, where he was a member of the firm’s Executive Committee for many years and was for a time its managing partner. He was admitted to practice before the Arizona Superior Court, the U.S. District Court for Arizona, the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, and the U.S. Supreme Court. He was also involved for many years in his family’s real estate development businesses, where he was variously an officer, director, shareholder, and counsel in a number of family companies, including Granite Reef Farms, Inc., McKellips Land Corporation, Gem Land Company, and Willow Valley Water, Co., Inc. The companies created a small recreation and retirement community, known as Willow Valley, along the Colorado River in Mohave County.

Wayne loved the outdoors and spent many years camping, hiking, hunting, and fishing in Arizona’s north country, both in the White Mountains and under the Mogollon Rim, where his family had a cabin. He was also a skiing enthusiast, and he and his family skied all over the Southwest. He was often the brunt of affectionate family jokes, such as his nickname “the Thrasher,” because he was more interested in speed than finesse as he tore down the hill. Wayne was a devoted family man, and when his two sons were young, he delighted in participating with them in their activities. He was in YMCA Indian Guides with them, and he spent eight years coaching their youth baseball and soccer teams. Those times were among his fondest memories.

Wayne and Lyn both loved working with and for young people. They were involved for many years in Young Life, a Christian outreach to junior high and high school students, and they served on the Central Phoenix Committee. For more than twenty years he was also a member of the Living Streams Christian Church, where he served on the finance committee, volunteered as an usher, and provided occasional legal services, including assisting the church and its offshoots in the purchase of various facilities. He and Lyn also hosted the church’s college group in their home.

After he semi-retired, he and Lyn purchased a condo with close friends in San Diego, and they loved looking out at the ocean from their place there perched on Sunset Cliffs. He will be remembered by those close to him for his wild tales about his youth in Arizona, his signature cowboy hat and big turquoise ring, his cackle and grin as he bested them in games of cards or pool, his sand castles big enough to house all three of his grandchildren, his low voice annually reciting “The Night Before Christmas” and love of the whole Christmas season, and his affinity for gin and tonics.

Wayne is survived by his wife, Lyn, his son Briant, Briant’s wife Chris, and his grandchildren, Jenna, Malcolm, and Brody. A small burial service will be held in Santa Barbara, California where he will be laid to rest beside his son Eric, who predeceased him in 2000. A memorial service will be held at Living Streams Christian Church at 7000 N. Central Avenue, Phoenix, at 10:00 am, on Saturday, March 26.