Gibson served as governor until accepting appointment as judge of Vermont's U.S. District Court; he remained on the bench until his 1969 death in Brattleboro.

[1] He attended the public schools and graduated from Norwich University with an Artium Baccalaureus degree in 1923,[2] where he was a member of the Alpha chapter of the Theta Chi International Fraternity.

[11] As of 1939, Gibson was a captain serving as aide-de-camp to Leonard F. Wing, the brigadier general in command of the Vermont National Guard's 86th Infantry Brigade.

[13] While serving on the Senate staff, Gibson was part of a network of acquaintances who were all lawyers, Republican party activists and National Guard members.

[11][12][14] In addition to Gibson, this group included: Leonard F. Wing; Harold J. Arthur; Murdock A. Campbell; and Francis William Billado.

Knowing that Aiken desired to become a Senator, Gibson accepted the appointment and agreed not to run in a primary against him, which another appointee might have done.

[19] Gibson volunteered for active duty during World War II and served in the South Pacific as G-2 (Intelligence Officer) with the 43rd Infantry Division.

A newspaper photo showing him having his head bandaged after he was wounded was circulated internationally, along with a caption identifying him as a former Senator, and he gained a measure of fame as a result.

[32] In 1946, Vermont political observers expected Leonard F. Wing, the commander of the 43rd Division during the war, to run for governor.

The unanswered question was whether incumbent governor Mortimer R. Proctor would run again, or would defer to Wing for the Republican nomination, then tantamount to election in Vermont.

Making the case against unwritten party policies including the Mountain Rule and the limitation of Governors to two years in office, Gibson appealed to war veterans and younger voters, calling for action over inertia, saying "Under this rule a relatively small clique of people choose governors nearly 10 years in advance, supporting them up a series of political steps to the highest office.

)[36] Gibson defeated Proctor and won the general election in 1946, in what was called "a repudiation by Vermont voters of political practices and traditions that have been long established – a rebellion, not against outright mismanagement and inefficiency in the state government at Montpelier, but rather against the inertia and lack of aggressiveness of administration policies.

During Gibson's first term, he concentrated on increasing state services following years of small budgets and limited priorities following the Great Depression and World War II.

[38] He obtained approval of plans to expand and modernize state highways, improve health services, and enhance education and social welfare programs.

[40][41] Frustrated at dealing with a Republican Vermont General Assembly and party structure that was more conservative than he, Gibson contemplated an early exit from the governorship rather than trying for a third term.

As related by Jeffords, Gibson once paid closer attention to the facts than the letter of the law in order to arrive at a just outcome in a tort case involving skiing.

[55] In 1969 Gibson headed a committee to investigate the 1968 “Irasburg Affair,” in which an African American minister was targeted by a campaign to force him out of Vermont.