CATONSVILLE, Md. — A life, which unfolded with glory, bravery and sacrifice---friends and family members gathered to remember a Good Samaritan like few others, 63-year-old Pierre Gibbons.
In September of 2019, Gibbons was watching Monday Night Football when he heard an explosion and then ran across the street into an elderly woman’s burning home in Patterson Park to try to save her life.
Firefighters found both of them where they’d collapsed inside the front door trying to make it out, and Gibbons had suffered burns over 80 percent of his body, which would lead to 64 different surgeries in the years that followed.
Local hero laid to rest in Catonsville
He was recognized with the highest civilian award---the Carnegie Medal, but he was reluctant to recognize his own heroism.
“I’m kind of like, ‘Am I a hero or just a dude that went into a fire like an idiot?’” Gibbons told us at the time, “I don’t know. I’m still working on that, but if these guys say I am, then I am.”
Ironically, we’re told Gibbons’ selfless actions in trying to rescue his neighbor weren’t the first time he’d saved a life.
As a signalman on the USS Constellation, he came to the aid of a friend who was suicidal after receiving a ‘Dear John’ letter and had climbed the mast of the ship.
“Pierre climbed up, and I’m not sure how high it was, but he put himself at risk and talked to his friend for quite some time, but was able to talk him down and off the mast and keep him from taking his own life so, yes, Pierre had that in him,” recalled Pierre’s brother, Dave Gibbons.
A man who had come from a long line of veterans who instilled a spirit of service and sacrifice in his children as well, including his daughter who serves in the U.S. Coast Guard.
“We like to help others,” said Taylor Gibbons, “We talk about it all the time and we love our country so we’re proud of my dad. I think I can speak on behalf of the Gibbons when I say, ‘I think we’d all do it again.”
