Vermont Bar Journal, Vol. 40, No. 2 Vermont Bar Journal, Winter 2017, Vol. 43, No. 4 | Page 25

by George K. Belcher, Esq.
Charles Gibson
Sadly, on October 10, 2017 Charles E. Gib-
son, Jr. died. When I began practicing law in
Montpelier in 1978, Mr. Gibson was one of
the premier attorneys, practicing with John
Patterson and Austin Noble. In 2010 I inter-
viewed Mr. Gibson, primarily about his legal
journey. He had an amazing history as a law-
yer including solo practitioner, State’s Attor-
ney, Municipal Judge, Attorney General, and
partner in a successful firm. He also served
on the Board of Bar Examiners and the Uni-
form State Laws Commission. He was a con-
flict counsel for the Office of Defender Gen-
eral in Washington County from 1986-1987.
What follows is a condensed and edited se-
lection of the interview.
December 7, 2010
MR. BELCHER: Mr. Gibson, you told me
that you were born in Ryegate.
MR. GIBSON: No. I said that’s where I was
from. I was born in Brightlook Hospital, St.
Johnsbury, December 20, 1925.
MR. BELCHER: And were your parents
from St. J.?
MR. GIBSON: No. They were from Rye-
gate. The doctor was Dr. Fitch who was a
very well-known doctor at the Fitch clinic. My
mother went to him and so, other than go-
ing to Barre or Woodsville, New Hampshire,
Brightlook was the appropriate hospital. But
my parents lived in So. Ryegate.
MR. BELCHER: Where did you go to high
school?
MR. GIBSON: St. Johnsbury Academy.
MR. BELCHER: So after high school where
did you go?
MR. GIBSON: The University of Michigan
both undergrad and law school.
MR. BELCHER: And what did you study as
an undergraduate at University of Michigan?
MR. GIBSON: I majored in history and al-
most a major in political science. Those were
the two big things but I had other things.
MR. BELCHER: Was it a three year law
school?
MR. GIBSON: Yes.
MR. BELCHER: When you graduated from
law school did you come straight back to
Vermont?
MR. GIBSON: No, Vermont seemed too
quiet. I grew up in this little village of 350
people in the southern part of Caledonia
County and Vermont just seemed too quiet.
But I did not want to go to a big city, so I
thought of Hartford, Connecticut-- a beauti-
www.vtbar.org
ful city, the capitol of Connecticut. I had an
aunt and uncle living there, and that seemed
like something I would like to do, so I went
down there and just started going to law of-
fices where they had people who had gradu-
ated from the University of Michigan. I made
the rounds and they all told me that I real-
ly needed to pass the bar exam before they
could seriously consider me.
Sometime in the spring before the bar
exam was given in Connecticut, my osteo-
myelitis acted up … I’ve had it since I was
fifteen years old. On this date, December 7,
1941 I was lying in bed deathly sick with this
bone infection. I had never heard of it be-
fore. The first doctor, a local doctor, misdi-
agnosed it, but my leg swelled so you could
not even see the knee cap. Oh the pain was
just insufferable.
MR. BELCHER: So, this affected the bar
exam….
MR. GIBSON: Well, this knee acted up
again and I wound up for about a month or
so in Mary Hitchcock hospital in Hanover,
and they kept me in bed so I missed the bar
exam in Connecticut.
MR. BELCHER: So then what happened
career-wise?
MR. GIBSON: I went home to recover and
I went up to St. Johnsbury one day to vis-
it Graham Newell, who was a Senator from
Caledonia County for a good many years and
was Chairman of the Senate Education Com-
mittee for a good many years. He was there
at home and told me, “You know Waterman
and Downs are looking for somebody.” Ster-
ry Waterman was the famous lawyer from St.
Johnsbury and John Downs, who is part of
Downs, Rachlin and Martin now, had been
in an automobile accident. He had broken
a leg badly and he was going to be out for
quite a while, so John Downs was looking
for somebody to help him out in the office.
Well, I hadn’t thought about going back to
St. Johnsbury at all but when he told me that,
and missing the bar exams in Connecticut, I
thought, well I’ll go over and see, and I did
and John hired me for a year while he was
laid up.
MR. BELCHER: So you were hired without
being admitted to the bar yet.
MR. GIBSON: Yes. This would have been
probably August of 1954. I then took the bar
exam in September, passed and I stayed with
Waterman and Downs.
MR. BELCHER: Let’s talk for a minute
about taking the bar exam. Do you remem-
ber how many applicants there were that
year?
THE VERMONT BAR JOURNAL • WINTER 2017
MR. GIBSON: No, not for sure but my
guess is about 15 or 20.
MR. BELCHER: And was it a written or oral
exam?
MR. GIBSON: It was a combination, oral
and written.
MR. BELCHER: And was it given in the
Statehouse?
MR. GIBSON: I think so.
MR. BELCHER: Were you nervous about
the bar exam? Was it a stressful thing for
you?
MR. GIBSON: Well, I was nervous because
I had not had much time to prepare. I did
not start studying for the Vermont bar until
the first of August and the bar exam is mid-
September. John Downs gave me the exams
he had which had been given in prior years
so I went through all of those and made sure
I know the answers to those. I was a little
more nervous than everybody else was for
the oral exams. We had never had oral ex-
ams. [laughs].
I remember Dean Davis. He was a bar
examiner. He started asking me questions
about some constitutional matter and I
thought I was giving him a new answer and
he kept pressing me and I kept saying to my-
self, “This guy does not know the law here.”
[Laughs]. It did not occur to me that he was
doing what law professors had been doing to
me for three years. You know, trying to get
you to change your view and everything. But
anyway, I passed the bar.
MR. BELCHER: So, then you started right
in as a practicing lawyer with …
MR. GIBSON: Waterman & Downs. But
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