Harry Gibson

Dr. Harry Coe “Hi” Gibson was born on Sept. 3, 1931, in Eau Claire, Wisconsin, son of Ruth (Coe) and Harry Victor Gibson.

For most of his first seven years Hi’s family lived in rural Wisconsin where his father was a family physician. During the Depression there was limited income but the family always ate well because patients frequently paid with food. After completing a course in public health medicine at University of Michigan, Hi’s father accepted a position as city/county health officer in Great Falls/Silverbow County, Montana, and the family moved there in 1938. Hi grew up in and outside Great Falls, except for seventh grade when the family moved briefly to Wichita, Kansas, near where his father was stationed in the army during World War II.

Hi graduated from Great Falls High School in 1949, where his favorite course was day-trade radio, and from Harvard University in 1953. He earned his M.D. from Washington University, St. Louis in 1957, interned at Vancouver General Hospital, Vancouver, British Columbia, and from 1958 to 1960 was in the U.S. Public Health Service stationed with the Heart Disease Control Program at the Chicago Board of Health. While living in Chicago he met his future wife, Mary, and they married in 1960. They moved to Ann Arbor, Michigan, for his three year residency in ophthalmology at the University of Michigan, and in 1963 moved to Kalispell where he opened the Kalispell Eye Clinic. In the late 1990s, Hi joined Drs. Steve Weber and Roger Barth to form the Glacier Eye Clinic and together, along with the three ear-nose-and throat physicians in Kalispell, built the Two Medicine Building next to what is now the Logan Health complex on Buffalo Hill. Hi served as chief of staff at Kalispell Regional Hospital and president of the Montana Academy of Ophthalmology. Hi also traveled internationally to provide medical care in underserved part of the world, and often said that his stints in India and Guatemala were some of his most rewarding experiences in his years as an opthamologist. He retired from medical practice in 2001.

Hi enjoyed downhill and cross country skiing for many years and was an avid hiker. He, along with Spence Ryder, Ambrose Measure, Harry Isch and Ivan O’Neill, all of Kalispell, were the founding members of what later became known as the Over The Hill Gang, a legendary group that traversed most of the trails, bushwhacked through miles of buck brush, and climbed many of the peaks in Glacier Park, including five of the six 10,000 foot peaks in the park. For almost two decades, starting in the mid-’70s, they were also the only members of the Gang, but it grew in size and popularity as their peers retired and had time to join them, and hiking in the park and elsewhere in the area became a regular summer activity for countless lives in and around the Flathead Valley.

Hi was a regular attendee at the Tuesday jazz sessions at Snappy’s, and he and Mary were supporters and volunteers with the Glacier Jazz Festival from its beginnings. He was a founding member of the Glacier Symphony and Chorale board and he and Mary actively supported GSC and other local theater and music programs. They regularly traveled to Seattle Opera performances. Mary and Hi also enjoyed travel in this and other countries and made repeated visits to help at a mission in the Guatemala highlands.

In 2018, Hi and Mary moved to the Villas in the Immanuel Lutheran Home Communities where they greatly enjoyed activities and socializing with existing friends, as well as making many new and close friends. In recent years Hi had enjoyed weekday morning coffee and conversation at Norm’s News and The Villas. He is remembered by his friends for his friendship, warmth and generosity and they always enjoyed listening to one, or several, of his many stories, even though they had probably heard it several times before.

Hi was preceded in death by his sister Betty Greaves of Kalispell, and brother Ed Gibson of Columbia Falls. His wife of 61 years, Mary, passed Aug. 18, six days after his death on Aug. 12, 2021.

He is survived by three sons, David and wife Marca (Robbin) in Helena and Fairfield, Montana, and their children, Gage and Holt; Bruce in Columbia Falls, and his partner Eva Buker; Paul of Kalispell and his partner Marie Mitchell; niece Susan Hubele and her family; nephew John Greaves; grand-niece Lisa Manning and her husband; brother-in-law Hank Beekley and his wife Theresa of Delmar, New York, and their family; and foster daughter Donna (Chabot) Griffus and her family of Diamond Lake, Washington.

Both Hi and Mary loved and cared deeply for the well being of the local community and would prefer to have their lives celebrated in a way that honored that care and compassion. In keeping with this, a private ceremony will be held on Oct. 16 at 10 a.m., with a livestream broadcast that can be viewed at https://youtu.be/7jZ3EOjb9fE. There will also be limited seating available at FVCC for those that wish to watch the livestream together; please call 406-219-7046‬ for more information.

In lieu of flowers, the family requests donations in Hi and Mary’s name be made to the Glacier Symphony and Chorale, the FVCC Foundation, or the Kalispell First Presbyterian Church.