Race Against Time: Gibbs' WWII Living History Project

As an Edison High School student, Tom Gibbs wasn’t sure if he wanted to stray too far from home during college. Now a proud resident of New Orleans, Gibbs travels the country interviewing the Greatest Generation about fighting in World War II.

Gibbs, who graduated from Edison in 2005 and Loyola University in New Orleans in 2009, has been a special projects historian at the National World War II Museum in New Orleans since August.

Gibbs told Patch he has traveled the country, interviewing more than 30 veterans in San Francisco, Miami, Las Vegas and Philadelphia.

Gibbs’ work is inspiring, but it is also a race against time. “Our main goal at the museum right now is to interview these people and get their stories before they pass away,” he said.

The interviews aren't for any specific project, Gibbs said, but rather for many different ones. For instance, footage from some of his interviews has been used for an upcoming project about the 70th anniversary of the Battle of Midway. A trailer for the exhibit can be found on the National World War II Museum's Youtube channel. 

In January 2012, Gibbs went to Baton Rouge, La. and interviewed a veteran of the attack on Pearl Harbor who had been stationed aboard the U.S.S. California, one of the ships that sank that day.

“He was telling me how he saw the Japanese [planes] come out over the water and drop torpedoes,” Gibbs said. “And he said, ‘We saw one of the torpedoes in the water heading directly for us and there was nothing we could do about it.’ It was a pretty intense interview.”

Other interviews have stuck with him as well, he said, including one with a group of 11 Holocaust survivors in Cherry Hill, NJ. Four of them had lived through the horrors at Auschwitz, he said.

“I can’t believe these people really went through this, and for me that was just a really powerful trip.”

The interviews Gibbs conducts focus on soldiers’ stories and personal details.

“They command a certain amount of respect, and really, you have 10 minutes before an interview to kind of get to know them, and then you’re expected to sit down and get some of the most intimate details of their life out of them,” Gibbs said. “For a lot of these guys, combat was a very, very, very stressful thing, and they carry the effects of it even today. You can tell that it was very real for these people.”

Gibbs pitched on Edison’s baseball team, and was elected National District Player of the Year when he was a senior. But his plans to play baseball and major in history at Loyola were put on hold when Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans in August 2005.

“Katrina hit on what was supposed to be my first day of college, so I had to leave and went to Georgetown for a semester,” he said.

Gibbs mother, Nanette, said that was a difficult experience for him, but had a lot to do with his love for the city. “They got to watch the city be put back together,” she said.

“New Orleans is a great city,” Gibbs said. “It’s one of the treasures of this country, and people shouldn’t knock on it.”

A love for New Orleans and history run in the Gibbs family. Nanette and her husband, John, now a librarian at the Mount Vernon Estate, both went to school in the city, at Loyola and Tulane University, respectively. Ironically, Nanette said, they didn’t meet until they began working at the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C.

Gibbs has finished classes in his graduate school program and is currently working on his thesis for his Masters Degree at the University of New Orleans.