OBITUARY

Dominion, Volume 14, Issue 143, 12 March 1921, Page 6

OBITUARY

MR. JOHN R. GIBBONS

By the death of Mr. John R. Gibbons, chief reporter of the "Evening Post," a. very worthy citizen has been lost to' the community. Mr. Gibbons, who passed away in a private hospital on Thursday night, had been associated with journalism in the Dominion for close on half acentury—for forty years on the staff e.f the "Evening Post"—and he leaves behind him a record no pressman could fail to be proud of. His was the success of personality. Mr. Gibbons was a man who always kept in touch with everything that was moving, and he was always vitally active on behalf of the interests he served. But beyond and above such conscientiousness, he was a journalist who loved his fellow man, and who would inconvenience himself to help someone else on their way, and that in a fnllhearted sympathetic manner that made, him endeared to every pressman with whom he came in contact. No one ever had anything but good to say of "Jack’' ■Gibbons. As a young man Mr. Gibbons was a keen follower of Rugby football, and as part owner of the yacht Pet, andlater the Muhina, was an ardent yachtsman for many years, and ninny are the good stories told of his bonhomme and good heart in those happy days.

Mr. Gibbons began his life as a pressman on the Thames “Advertiser,” when the paper was controlled by Messrs. Wilkinson and Horton (the latter afterwards becoming a member of the proprietary of the “N.Z. Herald”). He joined the "Post" in AVellihgton in 1882. and five years later succeeded Mr. James O. Brown, as chief reporter, a position he retained up till the time of his death.

Mr. Gibbons was Ibe son of the late Mr. John Gibbons, of Thames, one of a band of brothers who came out to New Zealand from Nova Scotia and established sawmills in Auckland. ’There was cne at the Thames and another at Te Huia. Manukau Harbour. Mr. J. R. Gibbons is survived by his son and daughter, Master Kingston Gibbons and Miss Ngaire Gibbons. He never really recovered from the blow oi the death of liis son, Artilleryman Huon Gibbons, who died on board 'the Tahiti among the many who lost their lives through influenza, shortly after that vessel had called at Sierra Leone on her way to England with the 41st Reinforcements. Mrs. Gibbous died in October last after an operation. His other relatives are Captain R. 11. Gibbons, harbourmaster at Onehunga, and Messrs. Frank and Edward Gibbons, engineers, Auckland. His only sister, Miss Lena Gibbons, is mistress of a Native school near Whakatane.