Mary Lou Gibson has one of those bell-clear voices. She was born in 1939, but at times, she sounds like a woman in her 30s. She says she hasn’t noticed.
Her house is bright and tidy in the afternoon. An angel hovers above the couch, painted by her granddaughter. Most of her decorations are black-and-white family photos. They hang in the short front hall – “my wedding wall” – and stand up on an antique desk made of marbled wood. She asks me to pardon the blanket that is neatly draped over a chair. Her 2-year-old corgi mix Wendy is shedding a lot this spring.
Gibson, a trained journalist, has a basket of magazines and newspapers by the hearth. There’s a new issue from a Nebraska high school’s newspaper and copies of two of the Catholic publications which regularly publish her articles on the lives of saints…