A dream come true, 55 years later NHS letterman finally gets his jacket

It’s never too late for a dream to come true. Ask 72-year-old Gene Gibbs of Poplar Bluff, who has wanted his Neelyville High School letterman jacket for 55 years.

The semi-retired salesman’s dream recently became a reality.

“If you dream of something, keep trying,” Gibbs said.

He always wanted the letterman’s jacket he earned while playing baseball at Neelyville High School in 1963-64, the year before his 1965 graduation.

But he could not afford to buy a jacket while he was a student. He worked all the time, Gibbs said, and the money was used to help support his family.

Gibbs was 11 years old when his father, Glenn, died in 1958.

He was one of six children, ages 14-2. As the oldest son, he took seriously helping provide for the family. He helped his mother, Grace, who was raising the family “on dad’s little social security check,” Gibbs said.

Along with keeping up with his school work and sports, Gibbs kept busy hauling hay, pitching watermelons, chopping and picking cotton and anything else he could do to earn money. He remembers “working day and night.”

Gene Gibbs is shown in a school photo, listed as student of the month, Tiger staff, class king, baseball, class officer, baseball manager and basketball manage.

He picked cotton to make money to buy school clothes and books.

“I would pick a hundred pounds of cotton and earn $3,” said Gibbs, recalling Levis also cost $3 a pair. Everyday, he felt like he was able to buy a pair of jeans.

“So many people had it hard,” he recalled.

He lettered in baseball his junior year, but gave up playing left field when he met Mary, the love of his life.

Gene Gibbs is shown front, right in this photo of Neelyville High School basketball team, of which he was manager.

“We fell in love our senior year,” he said, adding he was too busy to play baseball after that.

While he quite playing on the school team, Gibbs kept playing softball on community teams until he was 45. He also enjoyed coaching his son, Gene Jr., and daughter, Teresa’s, teams.

Gibbs has worked in sales most of his life. He was employed by Barnes Grocer in Poplar Bluff for 15 years before the business closed. He took a sales job with a tobacco company in Columbia, Missouri, where he lived until he retired in 2008 and returned to Poplar Bluff.

“God has been good to me,” Gibbs said.

He still works part-time to stay active and buy things for his only grandchild, Anniston, who is 15.

“I am very, very proud of her,” he said.

She is a cheerleader and involved in sports in Daytona Beach, Florida.

With all of his hard work and success, he kept thinking about the jacket and “it’s never too late for a dream to come true.”

Gibbs decided to visit Deborah Parish, Neelyville superintendent, to ask for help in his quest.

He approached Parish, explaining he could now afford the jacket and asking how to get one.

Parish was excited to help and called the school’s BSN Sports representative Brad Eddington of Doniphan, who works with schools providing jackets today.

He was more than willing to make Gibb’s dream become a reality, Parish said.

Eddington felt anyone with such lasting “school spirit and pride” deserved his jacket and he wanted to be a part of the project.

Eddington and Parish wanted the jacket to be perfect so they worked back and forth checking styles and colors, keeping it true to those worn in the 1960s.

“We got lucky matching the colors” and his number, his letter and accessories, Eddington said. “I was glad we could help.”

Eddington said, some schools no longer sponsor letterman jackets, but Neelyville school still offers jackets to students, who have “a lot of school spirit and pride.”

Staff at Neelyville School District and BSN Sports worked to make sure the colors and patches on this special order jacket for former student Gene Gibbs were true to those handed out in 1963-64. DAR/Paul Davis

“Fulfilling his dream makes my job worthwhile,” Eddington said.

While Gibbs had waited more than five decades, it would take another two months for his prize to arrive and a few more days for a seamstress to do her magic.

BSN sent his jacket to athletic director and girls basketball coach Becky Hale. She wasn’t aware of the special order until Parish started searching for the jacket.

Once the jacket was located, Parish and Gibbs called on one of his classmates, Mary Lou Moore, who owns an alteration shop, to sew on the patches.

Moore and Gibbs had been friends and classmates at Neelyville.

When asked to help, Moore’s response was, they “had to get that guy a jacket. It had been a long time.”

Jokingly Moore said, she had to “tolerate his impatient behavior.”

Since Moore had not sewn on patches in quite a while, she wanted to be certain they were in the right places.

“He had waited 55 years, what’s another couple of days,” Moore jokingly commented.

“This could not have happened to a better guy or a finer family,” Moore said.

Moore refused payment for her work, saying it was a “joy to be a part of this.”

While Gibbs stressed everyone should “keep trying” to make their dreams come true, Parish hopes Gibbs will wear his jacket to the alumni luncheon, Saturday, Oct. 5, to remind everyone dreams do come true even decades later.

Gibbs said even if you are really, really poor, just keep trying.