Dr. Benjamin Wright Gibson III died peacefully in the ICU Ward of the East Kootenay Regional Hospital on June 12th, 2015 in Cranbrook, British Columbia at the age of 70. He is survived by his sisters Judy, Margaret Ann, and Jean, and his children Ben, Matt, Rachel, and Brieanna.
Ben was born in Atlanta Georgia to Rachel and Benjamin Wright Gibson II. He graduated from University of Tennessee Dental School in 1975 with a degree in Dentistry before moving to Cranbrook, British Columbia. He was married and divorced twice and worked for over 30 years as a dentist. No one has determined whether those two things were related.
Later in his career he pursued a masters degree in Forensic Anthropology at the University of Idaho and worked with several organizations, such as the RCMP, the Pacific Forensic Odontology Seminar, and the FBI as a forensics expert on numerous cases, including at ground zero after the 9/11 attack. He felt that CSI depicts of the forensics industry about as realistically as the Lion King depicts life on the African savannah.
Ben was an avid skier, hunter, and lover of the outdoors -- a passion which he passed on to all of his children. He was well liked by many people in the community and by his former patients, except maybe those who needed root canals. He’s sorry about that.
As he neared the end of his life, Ben looked at death philosophically and took comfort in the words of Mark Twain: “I do not fear death. I had been dead for billions and billions of years before I was born, and had not suffered the slightest inconvenience from it.”