Rev. Gibble loses ALS fight
September 26, 2007
By DAVE GATHMAN Staff Writer
ELGIN -- The Rev. June Gibble was remembered as "a sit-on-the-floor-with-you" mom who put together a blended, Brady Bunch -style family of six kids; a lover of books and travel; a nursery-school teacher; an editor of Sunday school books; and a hospice chaplain who comforted dying people even after she found out she was dying from one of the most dreaded diseases in the book.
Gibble's husband, the Rev. Jay Gibble, said she died at home Thursday from amyotrophic lateral sclerosis -- also known as ALS or Lou Gehrig's disease. She was 70. A public memorial service, followed by a social time and visitation with the family, will be held at 12:30 p.m. Saturday at Highland Avenue Church of the Brethren, 783 W. Highland Ave., Elgin.
Jay said June grew up in a Church of the Brethren family on a farm in Virginia. "She felt a calling from early in life to do ministry. But in this church in those days, it was rare for a woman to get a call" to pastor a church, he said. "So she came in the side door."
Concentrating on her other big passion -- to work with children -- she studied elementary education and worked as a teacher in Minneapolis. At age 40, she was divorced from her first husband. Taking her two daughters to Elgin, she found a job editing Sunday school and small-group curriculum at the Church of the Brethren General Offices here. Five years later, she married Jay, a divorcee with four children who also worked in the denominational offices.
She was almost 50 when she was ordained as a minister in 1986. She continued working as an editor and writer at the denominational offices. The past eight years found her taking part-time jobs as the minister of congregational life at Highland Avenue Church of the Brethren and as a chaplain working with the dying through the Provena Saint Joseph Hospice.
Then one black day in April 2006, she discovered she soon would be needing hospice care herself. Jay recalls that for more than a year, she had been having some trouble enunciating words. When her left hand also started feeling weak, she went to doctors. They determined she had ALS, a disease of the nerves in which more and more of the muscles in one's body stop being able to work.
During the year after her diagnosis, the family conducted several fundraisers for the Les Turner ALS Foundation. A year ago this month, 30 family members and 30 other friends and church members walked with her in the foundation's ALS Walk4Life. They wore identical blue shirts and called their team "June's J-Walkers." Later in the fall, her children and grandchildren held a bake sale and a neighborhood garage sale.
Her daughter, Brenda Morrison, said June had planned for years to write a poem, knit an Afghan and paint an acrylic painting for each of their 18 grandchildren. The onset of the disease put that into question. "But in August, with her last ability to hold a paintbrush, using both hands, she made sure she finished the last painting," Morrison said.
Jay Gibble said his wife remained able to speak, though with badly slurred words, until two weeks before she died. She could communicate by writing for another week after that.
Jay said the family held a private service at Highland Avenue Church for the grandchildren and five great-grandchildren. Responding in kind to her gift of personalized poems to them, many of the children wrote a farewell message and placed it in the casket. Her body later was cremated.
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