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thedrifter
07-22-07, 07:35 AM
Marine's dream to sing takes him from Iraqi sand to Missouri stage
Sunday, July 22, 2007
By LEE HILL KAVANAUGH ~ The Kansas City Star

KANSAS CITY, Mo. -- Just weeks after he graduated in 1999 from Lee's Summit High School, Richard Gibson became a Marine.

Sent to Bahrain as an anti-terrorism specialist protecting Defense Department personnel, the young Marine soon found himself fighting a depression common to the newly deployed. Older Marines advised him to tap into memories of good times.

And that's when the thoughts began saturating his mind. In high school, he sang in nine choirs. He sang in musicals. Once he even sang in Carnegie Hall in New York City. He loved standing on a stage and entertaining an audience. He listened to operas with his dad, Hugo, who sang three seasons with a professional opera company in South Africa.

He always really liked to sing. The insight thunked him hard. He had not entertained the idea before; he always thought he'd probably become a chiropractor like his father.

Days later, a group of guys in his Bahrain barracks -- all Notre Dame fans -- were bummed because they wanted to hear "Danny Boy" but didn't have a recording. Gibson nervously offered them a free performance.

It was a moment he remembers still. Gibson sang it the best he could, trying to bring life into the song that touched so many.

"I put my heart into it," he says.

And there in the desert, Gibson earned a new nickname: The Voice.

He sang a lot at the base and once performed the national anthem on a Navy ship. He sang at retirement ceremonies, medal ceremonies, visiting-dignitary ceremonies while in the 3rd Battalion, 5th Marines.

In 2003, The Voice was deployed to Iraq despite a knee injury that could have kept him stateside. He wanted to go. He endured a mustard-gas attack and another one with a blood agent. He drove an unarmored Humvee through sand and man-made barriers and ate exhaust in convoys while driving hard to get into Baghdad.

Four months later, he came home. Memories of horrific sights had scarred him, but not his dreams of singing professionally. He began making plans. The Marines' lesson: You make your own destiny.

To begin his life plan, he needed to pass the first hurdle: the University of Missouri-Kansas City Conservatory of Music's audition. Gibson and his family had emigrated from South Africa in 1985, first to Minnesota, then to Lee's Summit, Mo. His father, Hugo V. Gibson, is a chiropractor who now practices privately in Lee's Summit.

Richard Gibson wanted to sing like his father. He traveled to his family's old hometown, Grahamstown, South Africa, and found his father's old teacher.

"In four months I took 62 lessons," he says. "He worked me over good. ... Got the gears oiled up."

After two years at the conservatory, he's earned the beginnings of a reputation. He's studying for six weeks at the American Institute of Musical Studies in Graz, Austria, on a scholarship. The day after he returns to Kansas City, he will be in rehearsals for a small part in the Lyric Opera of Kansas City's performance of "Aida."

"And I'm having so much fun," he says with a grin.

Ellie