by Marco Killinger
You’re invited to keep reading and find out answers to some intriguing questions:
Why are Paul’s hooded sweatshirt and Bermuda shorts enshrined in the Boston Athletic Association Museum, even though he never participated in a single athletic event?
Why did the worst thing that ever happened to Paul – a nightmarish psychedelic drug experience – turn out to be the best thing that ever happened to him?
How did a hellacious collision of two freight trains create a new career path for him?
Paul was born in 1945 to Unitarian parents who lived in Marblehead, a town on the Massachusetts seacoast north of Boston. His father, Thomas R.P. Gibb, Jr., grew up wanting to be a concert pianist but it was his fate to end up as a chemist who took part in the Manhattan Project by experimenting with different methods of purifying uranium and plutonium in order to make an atomic bomb.
He was somewhat of a narcissist and perfectionist, who spanked his children frequently but never hugged them until he was in his 80s. However, Paul is thankful that his father inspired in him a deep love of music (mostly classical), which has been a very important part of Paul’s life.
His mother, Jean Davis Gibb, grew up attending the Disciples of Christ and then Quaker meetings, and was an ardent anti-nuclear author her whole life, writing hundreds of newspaper articles about how the “the Bomb” could lead to the destruction of the world – much to the chagrin of her husband. She was very present for her children – always there with a bandaid when needed – but didn’t share a hug either. Both parents spent their summers traveling up and down the New England coast on their sailboat – almost always with other couples – while sending their two children, who felt very abandoned, to summer camps.
Paul grew up being either a C-student or an A-student, he says, almost never getting a B. Every time he went on to the next school he lost his confidence, and that made him hold back and lose track. But when he had a teacher he liked, he was on top of his class. His favorite one was named Lydia Whittemore, a teacher who smiled at and hugged the students. That made him a tip-top A-student for sure!
In high school he became editor of the student newspaper and founder and editor of the literary magazine. His straight-A high school report card got him admitted to the highly competitive Swarthmore College, but once there he became a C-student again, unable to keep up with the enormously long reading lists. After three semesters, he was told to leave.
And that was just at the time when draft boards were working overtime pulling in just about everybody who wasn’t in college. Paul went to various recruiters, hoping to find some way to keep from being sent to Vietnam. At the Coast Guard recruiting station, he asked if he could be a radioman in the reserves. But he was told there were no openings. He was within 15 seconds of signing up as a radioman in the regulars when a recruiter came up and said, “Something just opened up in the reserves.”
Many years later, he would learn that regular radiomen in the Coast Guard were sent to Vietnam and had one of the highest mortality rates. He is so thankful for having been accepted into the reserves.
After the required year of active duty, Paul moved to New York City and became an A-student at Columbia University. But this was when he had his nightmarish psychedelic experience. He was invited to a party and was offered something called “Angel Dust” {or PCPs). He thought it was just a high grade of marijuana and smoked it for an hour or more. And for almost a year after, he suffered debilitating paranoia and had to drop out of school for a semester.
Although that was the worst experience of his life, he says it led to the best experience. Namely, the psychotherapy he got that helped him get over his paranoia, also to get over a lot of other fears – and he became a much happier and more outgoing person than he had been. Then he met his future wife, Meri, at a party on the Lower East Side, and they’ve been happily married ever since.
He went back to Columbia and got a B.A., an M.A., and a Ph.D. – all in English literature. Then he taught at small colleges for three years, but was disgusted at the horrible pay and the long list of demands that were placed on him. Being a long-time lover of railroads, he learned about a job in electronics on the rails that paid twice as much, and he got it – and loved it!
That railroad job eventually brought him and Meri and their children to Colorado in 1985. In the summer of that year, there was a head-on collision of two freight trains going a combined speed of 100 miles per hour, right under the US 36 overpass between Westminster and Broomfield. The accident was blamed on communication problems and Paul got the job of providing all kinds of communication alternatives along the line. The training he got enabled him to quit the railroad and start his own very successful telecommunication business in Boulder.
He and Meri fell in love with Boulder and started attending the UU church there. He joined the Fellowship in 2011. He loves singing in the choir and being a Service Associate. Lydia is his favorite UU minister ever, and he is very sad she left.
Oh, and why are his hooded sweatshirt and bermuda shorts enshrined in the Bostonm Athletic Association Museum? It’s because his sister, Bobbi Gibb, wore them back in 1966 when she became the first woman to run the Boston Marathon – beating 500 men. She wore them because she had to disguise her gender.
And, finally, Paul’s novel, Haunted by Hiroshima, whose two main characters are very much like his parents, was published in 2023 and is available on Amazon and Kindle.
Published March 23, 2024
