Associate Professor, Librarian
Palm Beach State
College
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| Assortment of items from the Hallock/Gibbs Collection, including a snapshot of Marian Hallock Gibbs, ca. 1943. |
Recently, a faded manila envelope mysteriously appeared on
my desk with no provenance. As I sifted through the worn newspaper clippings,
crumbling scrapbook pages, sepia toned photographs, hand-written tuition receipts,
type-written letters, fraternity party invitations, wrinkled sporting event pennants
and ink smeared report cards, an amazing story emerged. A tale of hard-working,
middle class Palm Beach County teenagers attending Florida’s first public
junior college. A chronicle of sweethearts separated by the second world war and
lives reorganized to support both life on the American home front, our national
security and war efforts.
I eventually pieced together that the materials were donated
to the college by the family of Marian Hallock Gibbs and John Allison Gibbs who
attended Palm Beach Junior College between 1941 and 1947. Marian Hallock served
as editor-in-chief for The Beachcomber,
the college’s newspaper. In 1942, she arranged for the first Florida Junior
College Journalism Conference and served as a correspondent for The Palm Beach Post newspaper,
chronicling Palm Beach Junior College’s “men in uniform,” and the “scrape for
scrap” drive for local newspapers.
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| Portrait: J. Allison Gibbs, Portrait in uniform. Dated November, 1943. |
Hallock married classmate J. Allison Gibbs before he enlisted
in the United States as infantry paratrooper in April 1943 and after
graduation she worked for The Palm Beach
Post as a staff writer. Though
Hallock and Gibbs were college sweethearts, the official Hallock’s May, 1943
graduation photograph shows only eight women. Gibbs eventually graduated from
Palm Beach Junior College in 1947.
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