Carolyn Coane Gibb was born July 8th, 1930, the younger daughter of Grace Gragg Sheridan Coane and Ralph Waldo Coane, At age fourteen, she experienced a vision of Jesus Christ, who appeared to her and called her to his service, an invitation which was to determine the course of her future life.
After graduating from Santa Barbara High School, Carolyn attended Prairie Bible School in Alberta, Canada, and later Wheaton College in Illinois, where she majored in Bible and prepared for the mission field. She married George Jackson Gibb in June, 1950, and after a brief period as missionaries in Chile, the couple returned to the United States, where they joined Carolyn’s mother Grace. Carolyn was to spend some years caring for her mother, and later, her elder sister Constance, and finally, her husband.
For most of their adult lives Carolyn and George engaged in home missions, conducting Bible classes for children and hosting adult Bible classes in their home. Often they sought to share their home with needy youths who lacked a functioning family, for whom they provided food, shelter, counsel, and affection. During this period Carolyn published a volume of devotional meditations, “More Than Enough”. After Grace’s death the couple moved to Carpinteria, where Carolyn and George became active members of the Carpinteria Baptist Church. Carolyn cared devotedly for George in his later years, until he expired peacefully in their home at the age of 93 in 2020.
Carolyn was a woman of high intelligence, scrupulous honesty, an exact memory, and consistent ideals. She was an energetic homemaker and hospitable cook with a concern for healthy foods and an interest in health care. In personal habits she was unselfish, un-materialistic, abstemious, and self-denying; her response to every compliment was, “I cannot do anything myself; it is only through God’s grace,” thus embodying her highest aspiration, “That through my life Thy loveliness may show.”
