Mural is faded, but not memory of 'Gib'

There is no name on the faded mural, a blurred image of a man in a fedora, with piercing eyes. There is just a poem, about a warrior who persevered through trials and tribulations, who faced defeat too soon.

It hovers above a playground of concrete, scattered trash, and two lonely swings.

It is passed every day, taking up the wall on the side of a rowhouse, and overlooking the old junkyard on Third Street near Norris. Many in this sliver of North Philadelphia, even those who live on the side of it, a block mixed with flower boxes and abandoned houses, don't remember the man. But to a handful, he is a legend.

"Just to see his face," said Gerald Johnson, 41, standing behind it on Bodine Street where he grew up, and where the man on the mural once lived, a narrow block pitted by vacant lots, old neighbors long gone. At the curb, a woman sells potato balls from a cart. "He did so much positive work. It's like he is still watching over the community. Every time I'm in the playground, I feel like he's watching over them kids."

Another longtime resident swears the eyes in the mural follow you.

In those eyes are tree-lined blocks, barbecues, and play streets with shuffleboard games; the demise of factories on nearby American Street; the demons of heroin and crack that undid families and attacked the playground; and the spirit of those who clung together for the pride of the community.

Back then, the man in the mural, one of more than 3,500 murals in the city, was a champion, a good, good guy, those who remember say, who in many ways has outlived the neighborhood.

His thick, gravelly voice earned James Gibson the nickname Froggy. Others mostly called him Gib.

A roofer by trade, he lived near the corner of Bodine Street. When he wasn't working, he was sweeping, block after block, sometimes before the sun came up.

His house is now a weeded lot, tarnished with trash.

"It was a real mess around here before he started getting into it," said his brother Rochelle, 55. The two shared the house until the late '70s, when Rochelle moved next door with his wife and raised two sons. The couple now lives in Mount Airy, where they keep Gib's ashes in a gold box in the dining room. He died in 1997, at 45.

Gib never finished high school, but in his worn work clothes and caked boots, he became mayor of Bodine Street.

He used that same broom, people say, to chase junkies and drug dealers from the playground.

"Once we were playing basketball," said his nephew Steven, 34, who wrote the mural's poem, "and there was some junkies in there getting high. The next thing you know, there's Gib, carrying a broom. He started cussing them out something ridiculous, saying 'Don't you see these kids out here?' "

"It was funny because I never really saw my uncle go off like that."

The neighborhood was bolstered by church leaders, community groups, and residents, mostly homemakers, who met often and organized to get politicians and police to respond to a wave of ills.

"Young guys like that, there weren't a lot of them," said Michael DiBerardinis, deputy mayor for environmental and community resources, then part of a neighborhood group in Kensington. He recruited Gib for the group's board. "He had this deep caring for the neighborhood and the folks who lived in it. He had no agenda going except that."

Gib did handyman jobs, sometimes for a plate of food. He hosted hot dog days. He also claimed the playground.

"That takes courage," DiBerardinis said. "If you're going to say these drug pushers can't be here, that's serious business on both sides. He was not afraid. That's what I liked about him."

Gib stood about 5-foot-10, with a laborer's build. His constant refrain was: "I'm fired up, and I ain't taking no more."

He swept up crack vials. He bought a backboard. He got the city to put in a giant slide.

"We couldn't get lights," his nephew said, "but we played ball until it got dark."

Old heads took up the benches and politicked over cans of beer. Sometimes Gib would fire up the grill.

"That was his pride and joy, that little playground," said Wilfredo Rojas, then part of a Norris Square civic group. "The drug dealers never took that spot from him because he was always vigilant."

Some days, Gib piled dawdling children in the back of his red pickup truck. "Sit on each other!" he barked when they complained there was no space left. Then off they would go on an outside adventure, to the skating rink, bowling alley, or movie theater, until night fell, on Gib's dime.

He took older children out on jobs. He handed out envelopes at quitting time, thick with dollar bills.

He told his brother: "I give them all ones because it makes it look like they got something."

"It worked," said Rochelle, laughing. "They always asked him, 'You got anything for me to do, Mr. James?' He didn't want them out there selling drugs."

Gib kept his living room bare, except for an easy chair and a radio he cranked with Earth, Wind and Fire. He had no known vices, except butchering words like shrimp into skrimp.

"He wasn't an educated man, or a wealthy man," his nephew said, "but he was a good man."

When Gib shed his work clothes, he proudly flashed suits from the thrift store. Some weekends, he rented cars to visit family and friends.

Early on Jan. 2, 1997, tragedy struck.

Gib had rung in the New Year with family in West Philly and was headed home in his rented Oldsmobile. Nearby, police were chasing a stolen sports car.

The car slammed into his driver's side near 20th and Spring Garden Streets. The Olds burst into flames, Gib trapped inside.

His death prompted front-page newspaper stories, yellowed copies of which Rochelle and his wife keep with family pictures. The driver, 32, was charged with murder and drunken driving. An investigation found no wrongdoing by police.

The mural, once vivid, was completed that New Year's Eve. An artist with the city's Anti-Graffiti Network, now the Philadelphia Mural Arts program, colored it with house paint.

"It represents a slice of time in our city's history," said Kevin Brown, project manager at Mural Arts. "If an older mural means a lot to a community, we will restore it. If it's something the community feels has used its life span, we probably would use that wall for something else. The goal is to not have any faded murals, but to take care of them as a collection of public art."

The image still looms but, "it's like James is fading away," laments his sister-in-law Denise.

And the little playground is eerily bare. The giant slide and merry-go-round are gone. Trash sullies the ground. The basketball hoop has no net. And the promised marker reading Gibson Playground was never installed.

"The kids still go down there," said Johnson of Bodine Street, a father of three. "They use whatever they got."

It's easy for some to imagine.

"It would have been different if Gib was around," his nephew said, "because he was never going to leave."