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Photos by Sydney Cromwell.
Ben Gibson, a West Homewood resident, has been involved with the city parks and recreation department in a variety of ways since he was 19 years old.
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Sydney Cromwell
Ben Gibson after graduating from Shades Valley High, right before his first summer lifeguarding for the City of Homewood.
Ben Gibson says he started lifeguarding at Homewood’s pool just because of the “pretty girls.” But it was the start of six decades of service across the city’s parks and recreation system.
Now a West Homewood resident, Ben Gibson’s family moved to Homewood in 1948, when he was in middle school. His house, on the corner of Broadway Street and College Avenue, was right next door to his school.
Ben Gibson, now 81, graduated Shades Valley High School in 1954. That summer was the first of three he would spend as a lifeguard at the city pool and one of the earliest years of Homewood having its own city pool.
By the time he met and married Dawn Gibson in 1967, his love for the parks was fully formed. For the first few years of their marriage, Ben Gibson volunteered his time in the community center’s teen lounge.
“I think it was before we were actually married, but we were walking through the park, and I said to him, ‘Well, you really love this park,’” Dawn Gibson recalled. “And he said, ‘I do.’ And he said, ‘I hope someday when we have kids, they’ll love it.’ So what goes around comes around.”
And it did come around for Ben Gibson, when his oldest child, Julie, entered middle school. The parks and recreation department started a girls basketball program, and he volunteered to coach based on his own high school years in the sport.
“I thought I knew a little something, but playing it and teaching it and all is two different things,” Ben Gibson said.
He continued to coach even after Julie Gibson moved on to the high school team, helping develop young athletes to get ready for high school athletics and also frequently acting as a score or clock keeper for the Patriots’ games. When Julie Gibson got older, she would be paid $3 a game to keep score, and the father and daughter frequently did that together.
“Many, many Saturdays for several years, that was what they did together. They would just be gone all day; they’d spend the whole day at the gym,” Dawn Gibson said. “So I guess everything came to fruition that he had wanted before we even had children.”
“Our youth sports programs were getting up good, and they’re good to this day,” Ben Gibson said. “I’m so proud of our youth sports programs at Homewood Parks.”
Julie Gibson also participated in the junior park board, as well as the annual haunted house, and the Gibsons’ son Wayne was also a frequent sight at events at the parks.
In the 1980s, Ben Gibson decided to join the park board himself. His years on the board coincided with the creation of the Lee Community Center and the first community center at Central Park.
For 15 years, up until December 2016, Ben Gibson continued to work part time for the parks and recreation department. He would get up at 4:30 each morning to be the first one in the building, working a four-hour shift at the fitness center.
“I liked that best, opening up early,” Ben Gibson said. “Then you’ve got the rest ofthe day to yourself.”
He decided to retire at the end of 2016 due to mobility issues, but it wasn’t an easy decision to leave people he enjoyed seeing every time he worked.
“He kept plugging along, and I wouldn’t make him quit. I felt like it needed to be his decision, but I really worried,” Dawn Gibson said. “When he said he was ready to quit, I was all for it.”
“I’d almost have done it for free,” Ben Gibson said. “I’m just part of something, and I really miss it; I miss the people.”
Though his love for the parks and youth athletics system is unquestioned, Ben Gibson doesn’t always agree with decisions the department makes.
When a new community center was under discussion for Central Park, Ben Gibson said he wishes they had spent more time considering remodeling options rather than razing and rebuilding the center in 2014.
Ben Gibson is among many residents who feel the decisions being made on improvement projects at West Homewood and Patriot parks did not include enough public input. The bond that is funding the parks projects also will fund expansion in Homewood City Schools. The idea of moving the park to West Homewood has been considered, though the school system doesn’t have the financial means to do this.
Ben Gibson said he feels expanding the high school and adding a parking deck in its current spot is the better plan.
He said getting these projects right is critical because of their importance in drawing people to live in Homewood.
“The first thing people ask about is our school system, but the park system is a close second,” Ben Gibson said.
Though his face may not be seen around the parks and community centers as frequently anymore, Ben Gibson’s work for the department accomplished what he told his future wife so many years before.
“Our park system and our youth programs go a long way about what Homewood is about,” Ben Gibson said. He added that he worked in all these roles to make the city better, “but I guess mostly it was makingme better.”
