Frederic Sanders Gibson


He was born on July 4, 1907 in Birkenhead, England, across the Mersey River from Liverpool. His parents were John, called Jack, a butcher, and Ann Jane Sanders. He had 4 older brothers and sisters, Jack, Burt, Jean and Vi. Two other siblings died young. One of his first jobs was as a stable-hand.

He emigrated to Canada aboard the MS Alaunia, entering the port of Quebec in April 1927. He worked in Hamilton with Remington Rand as a machinist. After that he worked for DeForest Crosley, which was taken over by Rogers-Majestic Corp. Ltd.

He met and married Ann Fleming Henderson Bell Young, a clerk at Simpsons in downtown Toronto, in 1935. She was a colleague of his sister Vi. Ann was born in Lockee, near Dundee in Scotland in 1905. They raised two girls. Lillias Ann Jane was born in 1936 and Eleanor Marie Mortsen, born in 1940, joined the family as a foster child in 1943. She was adopted when they went to the United States. The family lived in Mimeco near Toronto and he worked at the Neptune Meters Company making gas meters.

They emigrated to the United States, to Pittsburgh, in 1951-52 and lived on 734 Newport Drive in Rolling Hills in Pittsburgh. Fred worked for the company of some relatives, Jim and Charlie MacGregor. The company, York Gillespie, designed and built special equipment machinery. Grandad told the story that they did annealing work for companies such as Boeing. But after a bad set of tubing was delivered to Boeing they went broke, and so he went to work at the Cooper Bessemer Locomotive Works in Grove City as a machinist. He lived during the week in Grove City and only came home on weekends. Just before they went to Florida he worked for a year at the Lawrenceville Screw Company.

Lillis married John Weber in 1956, and Fred moved with Ann and Eleanor to Florida in 1957 where they lived in Pinellas Park. He first worked as a machinist for Auto Schwartz. There he met one of his best friends, Manfred Schroeder, who had emigrated from Thueringen in Germany. He moved to Milton Roy, where he worked until he retired producing parts for medical equipment such as kidney dialysis machines.

Retirement didn’t last long - he was soon so bored at home that he went back to Milton-Roy “part-time”, meaning he went in every day and stayed as long as possible.
Lathes were his passion. He set up and ran Brown and Sharpe automatic lathe machines at the companies he worked for. He even bought his own lathe for his garage, and spent countless hours lovingly maintaining the machine and making things. He seems to have invented a number of screws, but of course the companies he worked for obtained the patents. I recall him making nice wooden candlesticks and even the leg of a chair that we needed replaced. He was always collecting pennies for us grandchildren [1], and would polish one up for us to a shine.

Ann died in October 1968 and is buried here in Pinellas Park.

1970 was a very eventful year. Eleanor married Bob Lowry, and Grandad married Ann’s cousin Margaret Clark Bisset Brookson, called Peggy. She was born in Glasgow, Scotland and had worked for the Sloane family. He moved in with her in her trailer at Paisley’s Trailer Park in Redington Shores, Florida. Then it was discovered that he had cancer of the colon, and large portions of his colon had to be removed.

He was an active bowler and made many friends at the Park. Peggy became afflicted with Alzheimer’s Disease and he had to put her into a home in 1984.
She died seven years later in 1991.

One of the problems of living to a very old age, as Grandad did, reaching 92 years of age, is that you pretty much outlive all your friends. He was feeling increasingly lonely, and was to the point that he couldn’t really see to drive, although he never would admit it and careened down Gulf Blvd in his car, his guardian angel doing overtime.

He moved to Wesley Manor on Julington Creek, Florida just up the road from Lillis and John in Jacksonville in 1994. Here he met some more nice people, and enjoyed his room near the water. He would visit Lillis and John often, puttering around the garden and taking care of Liz, the dog. Towards the end his health was failing him and he needed around- the-clock care. He died at the home on March 31, 2000.

I have many fond memories of him: getting my penny bank, enjoying the breakers at the beach, going out to eat at Crabby Bill’s, watching him work at something with his lathe, smelling that awful stuff he put on his hair. He was very particular about the food he ate, he loved meat and potatoes and vegetables and gravy, with a cup of tea and dessert afterwards. He would have nothing to do with these new-fangled things like garlic or noodles or what not. I must admit that I sometimes cooked for him and snuck in a bit of garlic - he didn’t seem to mind it, if he didn’t know that it was being used!

I would drive around with him when he visited his friends: Manfred and Josie with their beer-drinking German Shepherds, other friends Gertrude and Hilda and many more whose names I don’t recall. And as a kid I could always talk him into buying me something at McDonald’s or the 7-11, just as Rade seems able to talk his Grandma into buying him all sorts of junk!

He told lots of stories about the “good old days”, and I was so exceedingly stupid not to write them down. I had heard some so often I was sure I knew them by heart. But now I see that many of the stories and names are gone forever. We shared a very special trip together that was very hard for me: We met in England to go visit Birkenhead and Scotland in 1987. My father’s mother died the day my folks flew to England, and so my Dad flew back for her funeral alone, we continued on with Grandad to Birkenhead, although I wished I could be in both places at once.

He was proud as Punch to cross the Mersey River in a boat and walk down to a house he was sure was his parent’s house. We took his picture, posing in front of it. Back in Liverpool we went to see the Emigrant’s Museum. They had lots of posters that bored him, but the one exhibit transfixed him: Just a year after he went to Canada someone with a movie camera filmed the emigrant’s voyage over the ocean: the cramped beds, the long tables they ate at for meals, and finally, after many days, seeing land. It brought back so many memories for him, being able to see again what he himself had experienced.
He was a citizen of three countries: the UK, Canada and the US. But his heart was in Scotland and he especially loved the Scottish poet, Robert Burns. We all know Burns for the song we sing every New Year’s:

Should auld acquaintance be forgot,
And never brought to mind?
Should auld acquaintance be forgot,
And days o' lang syne?

He had Robert Burns’ “Grace before Meat” hanging on the wall in his dining room:

Some hae meat and canna eat,
And some would eat that want it;
But we hae meat, and we can eat,
Sae let the Lord be thankit.

Another favorite was this one:

Oh wad some power the giftie gie us
To see oursel's as others see us!
It wad frae monie a blunder free us,
And foolish notion.

I will close with a slight change in another of Burns’ poems:

He turn'd him right and round about
Upon the Florida [Irish] shore,
And gae his bridle reins a shake,
With, "Adieu for evermore, my dear,
And adieu for evermore."
[1] My brother John suggests a correction: "He was not 'always collecting pennies for us grandchildren'. He was 'always collecting pennies for his favorite grandchild, Debbie'. I used to fume that you'd come home from Germany and he'd hand you a piggy bank with, to my 7/8 year old brain, a fortune. I'd get nothing. Keith also, would get nothing." Oh dear, I did not realize that you two got nothing. I always thought there was a pig for each of you as well. I owe you dinner as compensation! It was usually enough for a freezy or a sweetie at the 7/11.