W
hen Nancy Gibbs ’78 was in the first grade, she wrote a seven-page story about a trip her family took to Pittsburgh. Proudly, she brought it into class, staffed by two teachers, when she returned. After reading it, the senior teacher looked her in the eyes and said, “I think you start too many sentences with the word ‘then.’” But from across the room, the other teacher, Dorothy Flanagan, saw Gibbs slink away and called her over to ask if she could read her story, too. What happened next was one of the most thrilling moments of Gibbs’s young life. Mrs. Flanagan pulled out an enormous gold star sticker—“unlike anything I had ever seen,” Gibbs said— and put it at the top of page one. “I think this is just wonderful,” Mrs. Flanagan told her wide-eyed student. “And I want you to go write more stories.” That’s exactly what Gibbs did. She got cracking with her parents’ manual typewriter and in the third grade, formed a writing club. “It was always what I did,” Gibbs said. She still has that Pittsburgh tale and is still grateful for Mrs. Flanagan’s kindness at just the right moment. “Would I have become a writer anyway? Possibly,” Gibbs mused. “But the care that she showed was just incredible.” Gibbs attended Friends Seminary from kindergarten through twelfth grade. Shortly after college and graduate school, she began working for Time, for which she currently serves as essayist and editor-at-large, churning out some of the most widely read news stories every week. She also writes for the Time Web site, and, as if that weren’t enough, somehow manages to find the time to pen books on presidential history (and raise two daughters, currently in sixth and ninth grade). For Gibbs, the weekly rhythm of Time allows for storytelling that matches the beat of our lives. “There is a life cycle to a week that I think is still part of many people’s lives,” she said, noting the commonness
18
FRIENDS SEMINARY
of weekly family dinners, weekly churchgoing, and even the ebb and flow of energy from Monday to Sunday. “So I like that as our unit of measure for telling a story. It’s the right amount of time for pausing, reflecting, taking stock, and pulling out of the constant day-to-day to say, ‘What do I need to know? What do I need to think about?’” She sees this approach as a stark contrast to the 24hour news cycle with which we’re all now living. The constant barrage leaves little room to find the story within the information. Cable news gives the moving picture, but there isn’t necessarily a logic to it, Gibbs explained. Important details are often relayed at the end of a story rather than at the beginning; the facts lack meaning. “The thing I love about writing for a weekly magazine [is that] it allows us time to collect all that raw data and find the narrative arc,” Gibbs said. “[To] find the characters, the morals, the messages, the miracles...” In 1986, Children of the Light, a history of Friends Seminary written by Gibbs, was published in conjunction with the School’s bicentennial. Through in-depth research coupled with interviews with such prominent figures as Earle Hunter, the 222-page book explores major issues and themes of the School and its storied past. Writing continues to challenge Gibbs today, just as it did when she was a student at Friends. She fondly remembers her English teachers Paul Supton and Phil Schwartz for the early lessons they taught her about what would one day become her profession. “They never left me with the illusion that writing was easy,” Gibbs said. “Having very good and demanding English teachers was valuable not only for what they taught me about [how to write] but also just that things worth doing are worth working at.” | f
Currently, Gibbs is uncovering the gems to be found in the history of friendships between presidents. The President’s Club, her in-progress book co-authored with Michael Duffy, explores the fascinating history of presidents calling upon their predecessors in times of need.