Meet Bill Gibbons
Until he was fifteen, Bill Gibbons lived in Sandyland - a wide place in the road in southern Arkansas. When he was four, his father left the family on the small farm where they lived. Bill's mother struggled to provide for the family of six children.
Bill is eight years younger than any of the other children. By the time he was ten, he and his mother were alone. They had lost the farm to foreclosure. Bill's mother sold personal belongings to keep the lights on and food on the table. There were days when little food was in the house. Bill learned to make it through the winter without a coat. And they had no health insurance or basic medical care. Bill remembers only one trip to the doctor before he was twelve-to get stitches in his hand.
Bill was without hope for the future. He skipped school. But his fourth grade teacher, Mrs. White, told him he could do anything he wanted to do in life if he came to school. And Bill's mother held on to her books, even when they didn't have a car, a telephone, or a television. That made Bill the best reader in the class.
After they lost the farm, Bill and his mother moved across the road to a small house. The man who bought the farm, Mr. Humphreys, hired Bill to work for him after school and on weekends. Mr. Humphreys was active in the Arkansas political reform movement, supporting Republican Winthrop Rockefeller over segregationist Democrat Orval Faubus. He inspired Bill to become involved too.
In 1965, Bill's older brother, Gordon, newly out of the Air Force, came to Sandyland, packed up the family's remaining belongings, and moved Bill and his mother to Memphis to seek a better life.
In Memphis, Bill attended Central High, a top college-preparatory public school from which his mother had graduated. He worked hard to make good grades.
While in high school, Bill met a young lawyer named Lamar Alexander, who was working in Howard Baker's campaign for the U.S. Senate. Lamar recruited Bill to head Young Tennesseans for Baker in Memphis. Bill also organized the Shelby County Teen-Age Republicans and chaired the Tennessee Teen-Age Republicans. And he was involved in local campaigns, going door-to-door to ask for votes for his candidates.
Bill's hard work at Central paid off. Teachers, especially Miss Shewmaker, the advanced math teacher, and Mr. Pruett, the guidance counselor, encouraged him. Although his mother didn't have a dime to send him to college, he earned a scholarship to Vanderbilt. There he was president of the College Republicans. He went to law school at Vanderbilt too. At Vanderbilt, he met Julia Floyd Smith who grew up in Pulaski, Tennessee, in Giles County and attended public schools there. They married in 1973 and have two children, Carey and Will, who attended Memphis city schools.
Bill worked in Winfield Dunn's campaign for governor in 1970, held statewide staff positions in Senator Howard Baker's re-election campaign in 1972 and Lamar's campaign for governor in 1974, and was Shelby County co-ordinator of Lamar's successful campaign in 1978.
Bill and Julia both served on Governor Alexander's staff from 1979-81. Bill was elected to the Memphis City Council in 1983 and the Shelby County Board of Commissioners in 1994.
In 1996, Governor Don Sundquist appointed Bill to fill a vacancy as district attorney general in Shelby County. He won election to that job in 1998, when he was unopposed, and in 2006, when he won a landslide 62% victory in a "blue" county.
As the state's chief law enforcement officer in Tennessee's largest county, Bill has gained the frontline executive experience we need in a governor. He oversees a caseload of around 100,000 cases per year. He makes tough calls, such as whether to seek the death penalty or try a 15-year old as an adult. He's gone through 12 state budget cycles and knows what it's like to cut budgets due to revenue shortfalls.
Bill has deep roots in his community. He's been a member of the same church-Idlewild Presbyterian-for 42 years and is an elder there. And he and Julia have lived in the same neighborhood all of their married life in Memphis. Their children went to public schools. Bill still campaigns door-to-door in every election, joined by volunteers, including one volunteer in 2006 for whom Bill went door-to-door in 1967 when the volunteer was a mayoral candidate. And one of the honors that meant the most was Miss Shewmaker's request that he be a pallbearer at her funeral.
Bill's life and professional experience have prepared him to be the kind of governor we need. He will devote to our state and all of its people the dedication, hard work, and perseverance he has displayed his entire life. And he'll be ready on day one.
Need more information? See Bill's bio here.
