Jeanne Gibbs

After suffering a debilitating stroke on March 7, 2022, Jeanne Gibbs passed away peacefully on November 9, 2024 in Eagan, MN.  Several family members had visited her in her final days.

Jeanne was born and raised in St Paul, MN as the first child of Roy and Jean Flipp.  Except for a few years in Morehead, MN, she lived her entire life in the Twin Cities.

She earned a Bachelor’s degree in Political Science from Macalester College (cum laude) and a Master’s degree in English from Morehead State University.

Jeanne’s career path took a variety of turns - from being an English professor, a real estate agent, an administrative position in a factory, to running a weight-loss business.  However, the vast majority of her career was spent in IT in various roles including Project Manager, Business Analyst, Database Designer, Process Analyst, and department Manager.

Jeanne is survived by 2 sons - Ian (Tara), Patrick (Susannah) - and 5 bonus daughters - Kathleen, Barbara, Beverly (Ken), Elizabeth (Dan), Suzanne (Barry) - 20 grandchildren, 17 great grandchildren, 4 great-great grandchildren, 2 brothers - Roger (JoAnn) and Robert (Char) - and 3 sisters - Patricia (Robert), Rita, and Sue (Tom). (Spouses are named in parentheses; bonus grandchildren, great grandchildren, and great-great grandchildren included in counts.)

Family was extremely important to Jeanne, regardless of the form taken.  “Step” (or “Bonus”) and “half” relatives were counted equally in family relationships and gatherings.  Even “exes” were welcome and encouraged.  For a while, she and her husband Coy hosted annual “Einstein Parties” on Einstein’s birthday.  The theme was relativity: you were invited “if you were a relative, looked like a relative, or wished you were a relative”.  She loved hosting parties - holiday gatherings, birthdays, dinner parties, costumed murder-mystery parties, and anything in between.

She loved doting on her grandchildren.  She made sure that as each grandchild reached a certain age they received a boombox/radio.  Other gifts were customary at other ages.  She and Coy enjoyed the annual rituals of taking individual grandkids to performances of the Christmas Carol, the Nutcracker, and Handel’s Messiah - a great way to ensure all the grandkids had 1:1 memories with their grandparents.  Afterwards, a meal at Bridgeman’s, Leann Chin or Cafe Latte was the order of the day.  And then bringing the whole group to the annual “Dayton’s 8th floor Christmas Display” was pure delight for all, and usually involved a meal at Circus Pizza afterwards.

Jeanne was a seamstress.  She made clothing (ranging from daily “general wear” outfits to snowsuits to wedding suits to halloween costumes) for Ian and Pat when they were young, dresses for young nieces and grand daughters, her own wedding dress and Coy’s wedding suit.  She even made giant floor pillows and furniture upholstery for couches and chairs.

Jeanne was a cook.   She had collected dozens and dozens of recipes from magazines, soup can labels, friends/family, etc.  And as she would modify them to her own taste, she'd note the modifications for next time.  Especially when baking, measurements were followed precisely, process steps were followed exactly; whatever was done could be replicated.  These loose recipes were all taped or stapled to pages of a spiral notebook that had a green cover.  In the late 1980s, she typed up all of those recipes, indexed them multiple ways, printed them on paper that had been 3-hole punched, and presented family members with 3-ring binders titled "The Green Book" as a Christmas present.  Sections of the Green Book were divided with "pockets" that were to be used to add our own recipes.

Jeanne was a reader.  Often multiple books per week, generally favoring murder mysteries but any genre was fair game.  When they were quite young, she’d read to Ian & Pat before bedtime.  (She would laugh so hard while reading the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy that she had to stop reading, which encouraged any in the room - Coy would often join for these readings - to burst into laughter as well.)  At one point, Jeanne was an active member of 3 different book clubs.

Jeanne was a traveler.  In the 1970s and 1980s, she planned many family road trips throughout the country - once as far away as North Carolina partly to visit former in-laws.  Though these trips were generally done via family sedan, one year a trip was taken in an RV and another year a houseboat.  After Ian and Pat had grown and left the house, Jeanne went on cruises with Coy, to areas as diverse as Alaska and the Caribbean.  After Coy passed, Jeanne continued to explore the world.  In 2017, she had a trip to Peru and in 2019 a trip to China and Japan.

Jeanne was a cake decorator.  This blended nicely with her passion for hosting parties and family events, but grew well beyond that.  Roughly a year prior to Ian & Tara’s wedding, Jeanne started practicing the techniques she’d use to decorate their wedding cake.  For that entire year, she would make multiple cakes each week - sometimes multiple per day! - for practice.  These “practice” cakes found their way to her friends, family, neighbors, and coworkers. The cakes were brought to a variety of social gatherings even if Jeanne had no part in the gathering other than being a friend/family of one of the attendees.  Not only did she decorate cakes herself, Jeanne became very active in online forums related to cake decorating - sometimes asking questions, but often providing well-appreciated advice to other decorators.

Jeanne was an avid collector.  She received a gift of penguin statues one year and over time that turned into a collection of more penguin statues, penguin artwork, and stuffed/plush penguins.  As part of her cake decorating endeavor, Jeanne collected all manner of cake pans - some took the form of super heroes, some were cartoon characters, some were sports-themed, some merely had interesting shapes.  She had so many cake pans (easily several hundred, and probably more than a thousand) that she ended up writing a book (The Collector’s Book of Novelty Pans) about them.  Though not a musician herself, Jeanne enjoyed music and collected lots of CDs from a wide variety of genres.  She had so many CDs that she had custom shelving made for her home office to hold them.

Jeanne was an advocate.  In his later years, Coy was diagnosed with Lewy Body Dementia (LBD).  Jeanne spent countless hours researching the disease, working tirelessly to keep Coy at home.  She learned from a variety of sources, including online forums.  As she learned more and more, she became a knowledgable source for other members of these forums and helped lead a LBD support group.

A Celebration of Life will be held in early April, coinciding with what would have been her 80th birthday.  In lieu of flowers, the family is suggesting donating to Minnesota Pubic Radio. (See link below.)

(Profile photo credit to Rick Fisher of RJF Photography; taken at the wedding of Jeanne’s grandson Jon to Leeann.)