My Dad

There's so much to say about my dad--your Great-Grandpa Giberson--

but since this is a family history blog I should start at the beginning... 

Richard Creighton Giberson was born on June 18, 1933 in the Seaside Hospital in Long Beach, California. It's not as simple as all that, though. He actually has two birth certificates! Biologically-speaking, he was born to Viola Grace Morgan of South Dakota. The other name on the certificate was Harry Hollis Ollie, a navy man who lived in California. Sadly, Viola contracted scarlet fever and died just six days after giving birth. Some details are sketchy but we understand that Harry Ollie remarried about six months later and kept baby Richard (Ollie) for up to two years.

As the story goes (depending on which version you're talking about), Harry had to ship out to sea at some point so the baby was left in the care of a woman who was good friends of Harry and Viola's named Gladys Ramona Giberson. Her husband was James (Jim), also in the navy and shipping out. I don't know where Harry's new wife was in all of this. My dad tells in his personal history ("Three Mothers: an Autobiography") that the new wife was not really on board with caring for someone else's child. Her loss was Ramona's gain because Ramona wanted a baby and ended up fighting in court for custody.

You know who won because my last name is Giberson and not Ollie. My dad never even heard the name Ollie until he was an adult, and then since that time there was always the lingering question--was Harry his biological father or not? (There's much more to this story, obviously, but it will have to be shared in future blog posts.)

Another important aspect to the story, though, is that Ramona and Jim divorced when Richard was about six years old or so. (He remembers last seeing his dad in person when he was nine, and that was his last contact.) Consequently, his mother worked very hard to provide a life for her and her son--much of it spent in California in the San Francisco Bay area and in San Diego, but sometimes in the Eastern United States due to later marriages for Ramona here or there.

My dad grew up around water and "boat" was his very first word. His first sentence was "Six o'clock. miss the boat."

The kind of boat he might have seen

FROM MY DAD'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY: "...my mother and I had a close, trusting relationship. She taught me to be honest, to never tell a lie, in short to be good. I never disappointed her in that regard." Education was very important to my dad's mom. When he was in second grade she withdrew him from one school because of an incident with the teacher, and put him in a Catholic School. My dad attributes those nuns with instilling in him a love of learning. There, he says, he had the unique opportunity of playing the part of a candy cane in their Christmas program. An event that he called "somewhat remarkable for a non-Catholic."

Not Great-Grandpa as a candy cane!

Future blog posts will no doubt include more stories of Richard's life, but these were his humble beginnings.

Great-Grandpa on his 80th birthday in 2013

Me with my dad in March 2020

I will add more pictures later of my dad as a child