Dr. Count Dillon Gibson Jr., former chair of Stanford's Department of Preventative Medicine, civil rights activist and a pioneer in the community health care movement, died July 23 after suffering a stroke. He was 81.
Tapping his twin passions for medicine and racial equality, Dr. Gibson helped create a model for community health centers that reached out to impoverished communities. His concept would later be copied by cities around the country.
A native of Covington, Ga., Dr. Gibson moved to Atlanta, where he attended Emory University. He also received his medical degree from Emory before completing his residency in New York City.
After serving in the U.S. Army as Chief of Laboratory Service in Vienna, Dr.
Gibson returned to New York, where he began a lifelong devotion to the Byzantine Church. Dr. Gibson researched infectious diseases at the Medical College of Virginia before joining Tufts University Medical School in Boston in 1958 as the chair of the Department of Preventative Medicine.
Dr. Gibson began laying the foundation for neighborhood health centers and eventually opened two centers in Boston and Mound Bayou, Miss.
"By growing up in the South, he witnessed the best and worst of human relations, and he had a lifelong determination to make a stand," said daughter Gabriella Irene Gibson.
During the 1960s, he also became intensely involved with the civil rights movement. In 1965, he marched with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. from Selma to Montgomery, Ala. He later supported the work of farmworker rights leader Cesar Chavez and Bay Area Native American activists.
He was a delegate to the White House Conferences on Health and Civil Rights.
He also served on several national and state health care committees.
In 1969, he moved to the Bay Area, where he served as chair of Stanford University's Department of Preventative Medicine. He remained on staff at Stanford until his retirement in 1988.
As he did earlier in his career, Dr. Gibson helped establish a neighborhood health center in East Palo Alto, called the Charles Drew Medical Center.
In 1999, Dr. Gibson moved to West Hartford, Conn., where he lived until his death.
Dr. Gibson was preceded in death by his wife, Katherine, who died Feb. 21 of this year. He is survived by daughter Gabriella Irene Gibson and her three sons, Tom, Max and Sam, all of Gillingham, England; son Thomas Gibson and his wife, Ruhi Maker, and their sons Taimur and Amir of Rochester, N.Y.; son Aleksey of Washington, D.C.; and son George Gibson and his wife, Zoe Strickler, and their daughter, Chloe, of Willington, Conn.
A funeral service was held Saturday in New Britain, Conn. The family asks that donations be made to Holy Trinity Byzantine Catholic Church, 121 Beaver St., New Britain CT 06051.