Background
Gibbons was born on July 21, 1901 in a log cabin on his family"s farm in Grider, Kentucky. His father was a Baptist minister.
Gibbons was born on July 21, 1901 in a log cabin on his family"s farm in Grider, Kentucky. His father was a Baptist minister.
Gibbons attended Barboursville Baptist College with the intention on becoming a teacher.
As of 2014, he is the last Republican to serve as Massachusetts Speaker of the House. From 1919 to 1925 he served in the United States Navy. He later worked for the Postal Telegraph Company.
In 1932 he started The Minute Manitoba Messenger Service.
In 1940, Gibbons was an unsuccessful candidate for the Stoneham, Massachusetts Board of Selectmen. He ran again the following year and was elected easily.
In 1942 he was elected to the Massachusetts House of Representatives. In 1949 he was elected Republican floor leader and four years later was elected Speaker of the House.
The Republicans lost control of the House in 1955 and Gibbons spent the next two years as Minority Leader.
In 1956, Gibbons was the Republican nominee for Lieutenant Governor, but lost to Robert F. Murphy. After the election he was elected Chairman of the Massachusetts Republican State Committee. In 1961, Governor John A. Volpe appointed Gibbons to the position of After accepting the job he moved to Beacon Hill.
In 1962 he was appointed Chairman of the State Government Center Commission.
On May 8, 1964, Gibbons was indicted on 23 counts of accepting bribes during his tenure as He was one of twenty-six people indicted by a special grand jury investigating corruption. Gibbons spent his later years in Wiscasset, Maine.
After over three and a half years without a trial, the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court ordered the Attorney General to start the trial by January 8, 1964. On January 8, Assistant Attorney General Richard East. Backman told Suffolk Superior Court Judge Felix Forte that the government was "unable to proceed" and Forte dismissed all of the charges against Gibbons.
Two days after the charges against him were dropped, Gibbons, who had been in ill health for some time, entered the hospital.
He died on February 2, 1968.
Gibbons soon became a major figure in state Republican politics. In 1958, following the death of the Republicans" only gubernatorial candidate, George Fingold, Gibbons ran for the party"s nomination as a write-in candidate.