Patience, persistence and hard work have been James Gibson’s tickets to success over the years.
He still enjoys challenges, including being one of BC’s oldest students.
Gibson, 73, always seen on campus in a suit and tie and walking with a cane, is a COBOL 16 student here at Bakersfield College. He travels to BC on a bus from Lancaster, a six-hour round trip, two days a week to learn COBOL — common business- oriented language — developed in 1959 for the United States government.
The Dearborn, Mich., native has an associate’s degree in science, a bachelor’s degree in business administration and accounting and a master’s degree in teaching reading improvement at the college level, so he’s not taking the class for another degree. He said he’s just getting reorientated to the COBOL which he originally took in 1967, saying there’s a job opportunity at Edwards Air Force Base.
It would be the latest in a series of career moves for Gibson, ranging from computers to the classroom. Through it all he has been married to his wife, Alice, for almost 53 years and raised six children.
Theirs was one of those rare “love at first sight” encounters. Gibson said that when he was attending Highlands University in Las Vegas, N.M., in 1949 he first met her when he walked into the women’s dormitory and she was playing one of his favorite piano pieces. Two months later they married.
“She’s had to put up with me for that many years. We’ve had our ups and downs, but we’ve come through it all,” he said.
Going back to school has reminded him of how times have changed.
When asked what he thought of the BC campus, Gibson said, “It’s sort of disappointing,” he said with a laugh. “When I was going to college all the women wore dresses and skirts and you didn’t see any bare midriffs or anything like this and the boys didn’t wear earrings and things like that. That’s disappointing. Things have changed so much.”
Change has been a part of his life. In 1965 Gibson, his wife, six small children and a dog, left Michigan in a blinding snowstorm to start their life in California.
San Diego City College is where he earned his A.S. degree in science in data processing and computer programming, graduating in 1968, he said.
It was in 1968, while still attending community college, that Gibson designed and put together a computer, calling it a “Digi Demo”– a computer that did “nothing.” He said it took him 350 hours to build.
He said he never received any recognition, because two weeks after the article, the computer was stolen from the trunk of his car.
Gibson said that within six months, the computer was sold on the open market. It was a tough lesson for him. He said he was advised by an attorney that pursuing a case against the company would be expensive so he “let it go.”
He and his family then moved to Yuma, Ariz., after he was hired for a data programmer job at the Yuma Proving Grounds.
He said that before he started the job, President Lyndon Johnson put the freeze on civil service hiring. “I was out of a job before I started. Moving to Yuma with six kids and no job,” he said. “Oh brother, was that a shock!”
He taught reading improvement and development at a community college.
Gibson attended the University of Tucson, earning his B.S. degree and his master’s degree. That was in the summer of 1974. He was working 15 hours a week, taking 28 units a semester and had six kids at home, he said. He also was doing a work study program and carried a 3.25 GPA for five semesters. He didn’t have to write a thesis for the master’s program.
“If I had to write a thesis, I probably wouldn’t have made it,” he said.