February 3, 1920-April 5, 2011.
Accomplished musician and veteran soldier Captain Horace Gibbons was the first Bermudian to lead the Bermuda Regiment band.
Gibbons began his military service with the Bermuda Militia Artillery (BMA) in 1935. Thirty years later, the BMA, the Island’s black military unit, amalgamated with the Bermuda Volunteer Rifle Corps (BVRC), the white unit, to become the Bermuda Regiment.
Gibbons was the Regiment’s first bandmaster, serving under Major Laurie Dunn, the Regiment’s first Director of Music. Major Dunn, a retired Director of Music of the Royal Engineers, had previously served as Director of Music of the BVRC. In 1970, Gibbons succeeded Dunn as Director of Music. It was a history-making appointment for a position that had been traditionally held by British military men.
Gibbons, the son of Horace and Mamie Gibbons, was born and raised in St. George’s. Horace Gibbons was a fisherman and freelance boat pilot. He also operated a limekiln on the family farm and worked as a coaler, refilling steamships that put into St. George’s with coal.
Gibbons worked with his father from childhood as a fisherman and also in the limekiln, where he nearly lost his eye in an accident. But it was his grandmother Ida Gibbons, an organist at the AME Church in Tucker’s Town, who recognized his talent and taught him how to read music.
Young Horace attended Richard Allen AME Church in St. George’s, which had a band. Its leader, James Smith, introduced Gibbons to the clarinet. That sealed his fate as a woodwind player—Gibbons’ instruments were the clarinet and saxophone.
In 1935, at age 15, Gibbons enlisted in the BMA as a musician. In 1939, he married Artimeza Watson, the daughter of BMA musician and Cup Match player Edward “Boar” Watson. He quit the BMA because he was too young to qualify for the Army’s married men’s allowance. He rejoined the Army the following year when he reached the qualifying age of 20. By then, the Second World War was in full swing, and Gibbons was stationed at St. David’s Battery, where BMA soldiers were posted during the war.
He remained with the BMA until 1946 when it disbanded. He worked by day as a driver for St. George’s Bakery and by night as a hotel musician, playing clarinet and saxophone, with the likes of Lance Hayward and Alfred “Freddie” Matthews. Later he worked as a fisherman and for a time as short-order cook at the United States Naval Base in St. David’s.
When the BMA was reactivated in 1951, Gibbons rejoined the unit as assistant bandmaster—a full-time position—rising to the position of bandmaster in 1958. In 1963, Governor Sir Julian Gascoigne arranged for Gibbons to take a six-week training stint with the Second Coldstream Guards in the United Kingdom.
In 1965, warrant officer Gibbons was appointed bandmaster of the newly formed Bermuda Regiment, which received its colours from Princess Margaret in a spectacular ceremony on November 25, 1965.
He succeeded Major Dunn upon his retirement in 1970 and served in the post until his own retirement in 1975.
By then, Capt Gibbons could look back on a career that saw him playing at numerous public functions in Bermuda and also for visiting dignitaries such as the Queen, Prince Philip and Princess Margaret, Haile Selassie, Sir Winston Churchill and US presidents Harry Truman, Dwight Eisenhower, John Kennedy and Richard Nixon.
Following his retirement from the Regiment, Gibbons embarked on a new career, teaching band music and maths at St. George’s Secondary School, where he remained until well into his 70s.
Gibbons was a lifelong student of music. He took lessons from Mark Williams and Mark Swan, both noted musicians of their day. Other teachers were Cathedral organist Leslie Betteridge and Major Dunn.
Music remained a central part of his life after his retirement. He played at Richard Allen and St. Peter’s West churches on Sundays, and also at other venues, including the geriatric ward at King Edward VII Memorial Hospital and Hannibal Lodge, of which he was a member.
Gibbons taught countless Regiment musicians at Admiralty House, where the BMA band was based after the war. One of them was Major Kenneth Dill, who succeeded him as Bandmaster in 1975 and Director of Music in 1980.
Gibbons persuaded the Bermuda Government to provide Dill with a four-year scholarship to study at the prestigious Royal Military School of Music at Kneller Hall in the United Kingdom. Gibbons was considered an exceptional teacher both within the military and in civilian life.
St. George’s Secondary School headmaster Dr. Erskine Simmons spoke of his dedication in1978, the year he received a community service award from the St. George’s Seventh-day Adventist Church.
Dr. Simmons told the Bermuda Sun that Gibbons taught students before assembly, during recess, lunch periods and in the evenings.
“He works quietly but very effectively,” he said.
It was the same for Regiment musicians, many of whom he taught in his spare time without any thought of charging them.
Gibbons was the recipient of several awards during his career. He received an MBE in the 1966 New Year’s Honours List and a Bermuda Arts Council Founder’s Award in 2003. In July 1998, he was honoured by the Bermuda branch of the Royal Garrison Artillery at RAA Club in St. George’s, where Kenneth Dill, his brother Barrett and Leslie Lowe, were among the Regiment musicians who paid tribute.
Gibbons was married to Artizema for 72 years, a partnership that ended with his death on April 20, 2011. The couple had raised six children. He received full military honours at his funeral at St. Peter’s Church. Fittingly, Bermuda Regiment soldiers served as pallbearers.
Major Kenneth Dill gave a tribute at the funeral, which said in part: “This gentle musical giant was a role model to all of us. He was always firm but always fair. He knew what he wanted and knew how to get it. Not through raising his voice or in anger or drawing his sword by through discipline, dedication, determination, persuasion and the ability to get out of us that which we thought we didn’t possess.”
