FEATURE
THE Principal Fr. Ian Gibbons, SJ Leads SLUH through Pandemic with Quiet Courage, Steadfast Spirit BY BEN DUMONT ’92
Fr. Ian Gibbons, SJ spent the week of March 8, 2020, on jury duty. Each day he arrived at the courthouse, the streets of St. Louis became more deserted. The city – like the rest of the world – was gradually unraveling as it grappled with the daunting, accelerating reality of COVID-19. St. Louis metropolitan area schools began shutting down the following week. “We had no time to prepare,” Fr. Gibbons recalls. As an educator, Fr. Gibbons was familiar with crises. He had endured the Columbine High School massacre at Regis Jesuit in Denver, terrorist attacks at Regis High School in New York City, as well as earthquakes and other emergencies on international student trips. But none of these experiences prepared him to lead during the Coronavirus pandemic.
“We had no playbook for managing such an unknown,” he says.
22 | SLUH Magazine
