Counselor who worked with married couples, cancer patients
Dennis L. Gibson, a clinical psychologist in DuPage County, wrote books including “The Sandwich Years,” which provided advice to middle-aged people caring for aging parents while also providing support to their adult children.
“He was always excited about finding new ways of counseling. He was always interested in techniques and things that would work — things that made a difference in people’s lives,” said A. Scott Moreau, Wheaton College graduate school dean and professor of intercultural studies.
Gibson, 82, died of complications of mantle cell lymphoma Dec. 24 at Northwestern Medicine Central DuPage Hospital in Winfield, said his wife of 59 years, Ruth. He had been a longtime Carol Stream resident.
Born Dennis Lee Gibson in Chicago, he graduated from Proviso High School in Maywood in 1955 and received a bachelor’s degree in chemical engineering from Northwestern University in 1960. Gibson also ran track at Northwestern, and he was president of the Triangle fraternity and served on the Technological Institute leadership council.
Gibson worked as chemical engineer for Dow Chemical in Michigan and with his wife formed a Young Life group, ministering to high school students.
That experience led Gibson to change careers. He decided that he “would rather work with people than chemicals,” his wife said, and he left Dow and moved his family to Minneapolis, where he got a doctoral degree in psychology from the University of Minnesota and where he and his wife started another Young Life group.
Gibson undertook a postdoctoral fellowship for one year in Norfolk, Nebraska, then taught for two years at the College of Wooster in Wooster, Ohio. After that, he and his wife moved to Wheaton in order to be close to their aging parents. Gibson taught for one semester at Wheaton College before going into private practice and forming a counseling group called Wheaton Counseling Associates.
Gibson’s counseling clients included church pastors and married couples. He and his wife also provided marriage seminars across North America.
“He and I did marriage seminars all over, in five states and in Canada, Ecuador and Costa Rica,” Ruth Gibson said.
Gibson, who had suffered from lymphoma and prostate cancer, considered himself well-qualified to offer counseling to those battling cancer. Ideal clients were “busy, retired executives who have an engineered kind of thinking, who are not going to just give up and who want me to get them up to speed as quickly as possible” about how to beat their cancer, he told the Tribune in 2006.
Gibson, who never retired, was motivated by a desire to “see people reconciled with each other and to see people get along well,” his wife said.
Gibson authored or coauthored four books, including “Live, Grow & Be Free: A Guide to Self-Parenting” in 1982, “The Strong-Willed Adult” in 1987 and “Vitality Therapy: Techniques for Short-Term Counseling” in 1989. “The Strong-Willed Adult” was a takeoff on the title of James Dobson’s noted 1978 howto book on discipline and child-rearing, “The StrongWilled Child.”
Gibson’s most personal book, however, was “The Sandwich Years,” which he co-authored in 1990 with his wife. Born from their experiences with their own parents and their adult children, the book offered strategies on effective intergenerational reconciliation.
“That was a personal experience book,” Ruth Gibson said.
Dennis Gibson saw the book as applicable to legions of Baby Boomers when it was published.
“The Baby Boomers now make up the bologna in the middle of the sandwich,” he told the Wheaton Daily Journal in October 1991. “Additionally, with women working outside of the home, people in the sandwich generation find themselves with less time and more responsibilities than ever before.
A son, Scott, died of heart failure Nov. 12. In addition to his wife, Gibson is survived by two other sons, Steve and Dave; two brothers, Norman and Brian; eight grandchildren; and one great-grandson.
A visitation for both Gibson and his son will take place at 10 a.m. Jan. 25 at Wheaton Bible Church, 27W500 North Ave., West Chicago. A funeral service will follow at 11 a.m.