Richard M. Gibson’s arrival, he says, was badly timed because he showed up in the early months of the twentieth century’s great depression. A few days later, he was taken home to a small farm in north central Indiana. During those years, there was always plenty to eat, but they had little else.

After high school, he served on a minesweeper during the Korean conflict before graduating from the Indiana University School of Business. It was immediately afterwards that he launched a long professional career, one that began with his having worked for the company in Southern California that built the Apollo spacecraft.

In the late 1960s, he moved to suburban Connecticut and commuted into New York each day. It was there that he was given management responsibilities with companies in the oil, basic metals, and executive search businesses. By the early 1970s, he’d settled in central Massachusetts, met the young lady who would eventually become his bride, changed careers, and spent a dozen years in various sales and administrative roles within the real estate industry.

Nearly a decade later, he relocated to south Texas where he served as an officer in the then largest privately held bank in the state. In 1986, he and his educator wife moved to Europe and have since lived in both Barcelona and the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg.

Mr. Gibson says of his interests that they’re mostly sedentary in nature. He’s a classical music listener and CD collector, reads extensively about the U.S. Civil War, is a cut above a novice photographer, and enjoys travel—although less so than he used to since he’s been a good many places around the world and it simply isn’t as easy as it once was. But seeing Europe by rail is excluded from the preceding.

If he has a hobby or two, it’s photography and also playing the techie geek. To take his mind off stringing words together, he likes nothing better than to take a “barebones” system and turn it into a muscular computer. To a lesser extent, he collects coins and also putters around with flowers and such on their terrace. He’s not much into television but does follow major news events and enjoys Discovery and the History Channel.