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Cecilia Jane Bridges (Gibbons) April 22, 1912 October 25, 2002 By Joe Bridges “Deep in December, it’s nice to remember the fire of September, that made us mellow…” from the musical, The Fantastiks. April 15, 1912 the great ship Titanic descended to it’s watery grave in the North Atlantic. Near the small Nebraska prairie town of Amherst, a mother of five prepared for the birth of her next child. The father, Thomas Patrick Gibbons an Irishman was homesteading a dry dusty farm. The mother, a second generation Alcesian of France/Germany, Katherine Hilda (Wirtner) Gibbons brought into the world, Cecilia Jane Gibbons, April 22, 1912 a week after the sea disaster. For her Baptism, her first name was taken from the patron saint of musicians, Saint Cecilia. Her middle name came from her Aunt Jane Gibbons. Her father opposed the 19th amendment giving women the right to vote, but he encouraged his 5 daughters and son to attend school. And so it was Cecilia would began her schooling in a one-room schoolhouse with her father as chairman of the school board for Amherst, Nebraska. For children or anyone really, there were few amenities on the prairie. Her mother told stories of famous people like Wyatt Earp and Bill Hickock, or cowboys. There were stories of their ancestors sleeping in the fields near the Rhine during harvest season awakening to the ghosts of Napoleon’s army crossing the river in long streams of cavalry carrying torches to light the way. Behind these ghosts were the cavalry of Europe charging after him. Katherine taught her children music, and played her pump organ to instruct and entertain them on lazy summer evenings. There is an old sepia photograph of Cecilia sitting on a haystack by their barn in Nebraska, playing with her brother and sisters. She’s about five, smiling and looks like her granddaughter Karen. When Cecilia was about 10 the Gibbons family moved from Amherst to Kansas City at 29th and Baltimore. The house overlooked Union Station and the construction site of the new war memorial. A medical building would eventually occupy spot. Cecilia along with her brother and sisters attended Redemptrist Catholic grade school and high school, just a couple of blocks south of there home. The schools are next to the limestone, gothic, Redemptrist church where she and her family attended mass. The stain glass windows, marble statues, immense pipe organ, high vaulted ceilings, and huge wooden doors can still be seen there. As child, I remember rolling marbles down the bell of an old trombone in the attic of our house, and seeing the dilapidated remnants of an old guitar. There is photograph of Cecilia in school music class, holding that same Gibson classical guitar. She was an accomplished trombonist, guitarist, handy on the keyboard and I guess her patron saint had an influence on her. Her strongest academic subject was math. Somewhere in the pictures of the crowds of school children lining the boulevard at the dedication of the War Memorial in a white lace dress, Cecilia Gibbons is watching Generals of World War 1, General Pershing of the United States and General Petain of France. The generals marched past and declared the end of world wars. Times were difficult as Cecilia grew into womanhood. Upon graduation form Redemptrist, she worked at Montgomery Wards at St. John and Belmont for a short while and was introduced to a man who lived in Buckner, Missouri named James Milton Bridges. He was a protestant and her parents cautioned her about the problems of mixed faith marriages. They loved to dance and spent many Saturdays with her sisters and there dates at the old Blue mills place on the Buckner-Atherton road. Well…eventually, Cecilia married this country gentleman named Jim and found herself living in a small farmhouse in Atherton, Missouri near an always busy railway less than a mile from her home. Her younger sister, Helen had been her bride’s maid. Very few photographs remain of Jim. He was 10 years Cecilia’s senior
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