The Historian
by Kurt GensheimerSit down and spend some time talking with 86 year-young Keith Gibson and you’ll quickly realize you’re talking to a renaissance man. Whether it’s ranching, construction, medical research, restaurant ownership, corporate sales, state health inspection, land surveying, obtaining top secret government clearance studying explosives, processing molten copper, serving in the armed forces, delivering newspapers, or writing about baseball and the history of his hometown of McGill, if there’s anything Gibson doesn’t have knowledge in, it’s how to carry on a boring conversation.
After all the things Gibson has accomplished in his life, I asked him what he would consider himself.
“Goofball,” said Gibson with a chuckle.
Gibson is rich when it comes to life experience and memories, especially memories of McGill. Born in 1935, Gibson was the son of a machinist and the grandson of a blacksmith, both of whom worked for Kennecott Copper Company. Gibson’s childhood revolved around baseball, and because of Kennecott, America’s pastime was a hallmark of culture in McGill.
Because McGill was a company-owned town, baseball was a way for Kennecott to provide a source of entertainment for employees as well as an athletic outlet for anyone who wanted to play. The company invested money into a professional-grade ballfield and supplied uniforms for every department within Kennecott’s McGill operation. At its peak, McGill had 3,000 residents, and the culture of the town was rooted in baseball.
“Almost every night for nearly 40 years there was a baseball game going on in McGill,” said Gibson. “Every department had a team, from the smelters and pipe fitters to mill workers and office workers. If a semi-pro team came in from somewhere like Utah, the company would select the best players from each department to play for the town team, the McGill Copper Socks.”
It wasn’t until the invention of the television in the 1950s did baseball stop becoming a nightly gathering of the McGill community. But those early days of McGill and its passion for baseball drove the culture of the town.
“Everything in McGill was friendly competition,” said Gibson. “Everything was a contest, and that drive to compete is why McGill won 18 state baseball championships to Ely’s one.”
Locals are aware of the longstanding rivalry between McGill and Ely residents, and the pride Gibson has of his hometown shines through in his smile.
“We were better athletes, because growing up in McGill always involved going uphill,” said Gibson. “McGill is built on the side of a mountain, whereas Ely is down in the flats. Even our old baseball field used to be uphill behind second base. The kids in McGill were fitter by necessity.”
But more than the old “uphill in both directions” saw, by hearing Gibson’s stories of growing up in McGill, it’s evident there was a strong cultural drive in town around working hard and succeeding in life. Because of its company town status, nobody owned housing. So when a worker quit, the family had to leave town, and another family came in. There was always a fresh cycle of families and students who became engrained in the hardworking McGill culture.
“Ninety percent of kids in McGill who graduated high school went to college,” said Gibson. “Out of a class of 25, the majority of them became engineers, lawyers, doctors, teachers and graduates of West Point or Annapolis.”
There was also a culture of acceptance, free from racial prejudice in McGill.
“I didn’t know prejudice until I went to college,” said Gibson, who is of Swedish heritage. “McGill was a melting pot of cultures. Italians worked alongside Greeks, Czechs, Irish, Austrians, Japanese and more. Everyone had to work, and shop and live with one another, even play with one another, so there was no room for prejudice in McGill.”
After high school, Gibson left McGill and attended medical school in Utah, and after a brief stint in the medical field, ended up in medical sales in San Francisco in the late 1960s. Even when he secured his big city job with Van Waters and Rogers, McGill had an influence.
“The president of the company, Nat Rogers, asked my boss how much I was going to get paid, and my boss said ‘400 with benefits’, which was pretty good then,” said Gibson. “Rogers looked at me and said, ‘Well he’s from McGill, start him at 500’. Then he said, ‘you’re probably wondering why I did that. I once dated a girl from McGill and visited regularly. Everybody I ever met in McGill was honest and hardworking.’”
Despite a good paying job with a company car, credit card, nice suits and dinners out, Gibson missed home and returned to McGill. After working on the factory floor hooking molten hot copper pots, Gibson moved into the chemistry lab. But it didn’t take long for Gibson to learn another signature personality trait.
“I don’t like to work on a time clock,” said Gibson. Since discovering this preference, Gibson has experienced many different lines of work in his life, laboring 12 hours days on a ranch well into his 80s, and hiking up giant mountains with wooden 4×4 posts marking mining claim surveys. “That job definitely kept me in good shape.”
Gibson is as voracious a writer as he is physically fit. He started writing 10 years ago because he wanted to leave a legacy story for his three children.
“I’m not sure if it’s because I wasn’t listening or because they didn’t say anything, but my parents never talked much about when they were growing up,” said Gibson.
In that time Gibson has become the de-facto historian of McGill, writing a weekly column of McGill News called “Keith’s Corner”. He’s also written multiple books on the history of McGill, including a book on McGill baseball that helped raise $2,000 for renovations to the McGill baseball field. In addition to his goofball status, he’s also known as “the museum guy”, dedicating his days to curating the McGill Drug Store Museum.
Once a functioning drug store deeded to White Pine County in 1980, the store is frozen in time 42 years ago, when it officially closed. Gibson got involved with the museum three years ago, and because of his ability to carry a conversation, Gibson is now a fixture there.
“I’ve met folks from all around the world and have heard some incredible stories,” said Gibson.
The museum has also had a massive impact on the lives of “downwinders” – citizens in Nevada, Arizona, New Mexico and Utah who were exposed to radioactive contamination during nuclear weapons testing in the 1950s.
“As a kid delivering newspapers, I remember riding my bike in the dark, then suddenly a flash that lit the sky like daytime for five seconds,” said Gibson. “Then a few minutes later a gust of wind that rattled windows.”
In order for ailing downwinders to prove to the federal government they were exposed to radiation, former residents of McGill would make the trek to the drug store, which preserved every single prescription ever written in the store.
“We’d find a prescription from the 1950s for them, proving they lived in McGill when the nuclear testing was happening in the Nevada desert,” said Gibson.
A couple years ago, after being run over by a cow and falling off his 4wheeler, at the urging of his children, Gibson moved off the ranch and back into town.
Every visitor of the McGill Drug Store should be thankful for the presence, wisdom, and knowledge of this self-proclaimed, hometown goofball.