Rod Gibson
In Memorial – Rod Gibson
Rod was an odd, quirky guy. He was an acquired taste. He didn’t wear the right clothes or think about commonplace things. I don’t even know who his other friends were at BHS. All I know is that we grew close as we grew up until his untimely death from kidney failure in 1975 or so.
After we graduated BHS, Rod and I (and many of you) moved on to Boise College. Rod and I were part of an eclectic group of free thinkers. We were too young to be beatniks and the hippies hadn’t emerged yet, at least in Boise. We watched foreign films and read Lawrence Ferlinghetti. We drank too much coffee in the Student Union and talked about “serious things”. Except for Rod, who kept bringing up these serious topics that nobody gave a hoot about…
When the school year ended in the Spring of 1966, Rod, Sheila Blakely, and I piled into Phil Engelhardt’s bright orange dune buggy, made from a stripped down Cadillac, and off we went to the big City of Portland. We moved into a communal house with some off-beat students from Lewis and Clark College. At its peak of insanity, there were 8 or 10 of us crashing in a little two bedroom house just below the college. Imagine the hygiene! Imagine our surprise when we discovered that Rod was keeping a detailed diary of all the activities – including the ingestion of various illegal substances. But not to worry, Rod explained. He was writing it in Spanish (as if no one in the Portland Police Dept. could read Spanish.)
Later in the Summer, Dan O’Leary (BHS class of ’63) and I hitched our way down the Coast to San Francisco and ended up in the Haight Ashbury. Rod moved back to Boise and went back to school. Before long he began experiencing the first of a long series of health issues. The next time I saw him he was in a wheelchair and the prognosis was that he would never walk again.
This didn’t slow him down much. He went to work for the City of Boise and was instrumental in saving the Hull’s Gulch area from development. Next time you walk the trail up Hull’s Gulch, thank Rod! When Rod came to visit me, there wasn’t wheelchair access to the house. Not to worry, said Rod. He slipped out the car and slid across the lawn on his bottom to the house.
Rod was living with his folks again in the Highlands. He convinced his Dad to build him a set of parallel bars in the backyard. I was so proud when I visited Boise once. I rang the doorbell and could see Rod sitting in the living room. He stood up and slowly made it to the door to let me in.
He didn’t stop with learning to walk again. His Dad gave him a tiny patch of lawn around his parallel bars and he made a garden. It was so small and so packed that he had stepping stones which were the only places he could step without crushing one of his precious plants. Eventually he even got good enough at hobbling around to join me in a volleyball game at a company picnic. What a sight he made swinging his cane at any kids that got in his way while he was trying to bat the ball over the net. He always made up his own rules in life.
His brother donated a kidney, hoping to save his brother. It worked for a while then it failed. I got a letter from Rod saying “I’m dying. Please pray for me.” It was the only time he ever admitted he was even sick. A couple of days later I got another letter, more typical of Rod, full of news about all the things he was interested. Within a couple of weeks, he was dead.
I don’t know if he had many other friends at BHS. But he had one. I miss him still.
Douglas Cochrane
Rod was an odd, quirky guy. He was an acquired taste. He didn’t wear the right clothes or think about commonplace things. I don’t even know who his other friends were at BHS. All I know is that we grew close as we grew up until his untimely death from kidney failure in 1975 or so.
After we graduated BHS, Rod and I (and many of you) moved on to Boise College. Rod and I were part of an eclectic group of free thinkers. We were too young to be beatniks and the hippies hadn’t emerged yet, at least in Boise. We watched foreign films and read Lawrence Ferlinghetti. We drank too much coffee in the Student Union and talked about “serious things”. Except for Rod, who kept bringing up these serious topics that nobody gave a hoot about…
When the school year ended in the Spring of 1966, Rod, Sheila Blakely, and I piled into Phil Engelhardt’s bright orange dune buggy, made from a stripped down Cadillac, and off we went to the big City of Portland. We moved into a communal house with some off-beat students from Lewis and Clark College. At its peak of insanity, there were 8 or 10 of us crashing in a little two bedroom house just below the college. Imagine the hygiene! Imagine our surprise when we discovered that Rod was keeping a detailed diary of all the activities – including the ingestion of various illegal substances. But not to worry, Rod explained. He was writing it in Spanish (as if no one in the Portland Police Dept. could read Spanish.)
Later in the Summer, Dan O’Leary (BHS class of ’63) and I hitched our way down the Coast to San Francisco and ended up in the Haight Ashbury. Rod moved back to Boise and went back to school. Before long he began experiencing the first of a long series of health issues. The next time I saw him he was in a wheelchair and the prognosis was that he would never walk again.
This didn’t slow him down much. He went to work for the City of Boise and was instrumental in saving the Hull’s Gulch area from development. Next time you walk the trail up Hull’s Gulch, thank Rod! When Rod came to visit me, there wasn’t wheelchair access to the house. Not to worry, said Rod. He slipped out the car and slid across the lawn on his bottom to the house.
Rod was living with his folks again in the Highlands. He convinced his Dad to build him a set of parallel bars in the backyard. I was so proud when I visited Boise once. I rang the doorbell and could see Rod sitting in the living room. He stood up and slowly made it to the door to let me in.
He didn’t stop with learning to walk again. His Dad gave him a tiny patch of lawn around his parallel bars and he made a garden. It was so small and so packed that he had stepping stones which were the only places he could step without crushing one of his precious plants. Eventually he even got good enough at hobbling around to join me in a volleyball game at a company picnic. What a sight he made swinging his cane at any kids that got in his way while he was trying to bat the ball over the net. He always made up his own rules in life.
His brother donated a kidney, hoping to save his brother. It worked for a while then it failed. I got a letter from Rod saying “I’m dying. Please pray for me.” It was the only time he ever admitted he was even sick. A couple of days later I got another letter, more typical of Rod, full of news about all the things he was interested. Within a couple of weeks, he was dead.
I don’t know if he had many other friends at BHS. But he had one. I miss him still.
Douglas Cochrane