Caribou native Christina Kane-Gibson moved to Massachusetts as soon as she turned 18, and later spent over a decade living in Texas, but eventually found her way back to her hometown of Caribou, a place she will always call “home.”
Kane-Gibson was one of the first babies born at a new facility in Cary Medical Center in Caribou, and grew up attending schools in the Caribou school system.
“I loved school,” she said. “I have so many good memories.”
Many of her former classmates and teachers are nearby, and she keeps in touch with others through Facebook. Her former homeroom teacher, David Martin, is now the mayor of Caribou.
“It’s fun to see him at council meetings,” said Kane-Gibson, who now works as Caribou’s marketing and events coordinator. “It’s like I’m back in homeroom.”
Social studies was among her favorite classes but math, she admitted, “was not my strong suit.”
Kane-Gibson was elected class president during her senior year and said she still keeps in touch with other class officers. She and several former classmates even plan to attend their class secretary’s wedding in Washington, D.C.
Being tasked with marketing the city of Caribou, Kane-Gibson said she focuses heavily on outward migration; although when she was 18, she said she “couldn’t wait to leave.”
She set her sights on Boston University, a school her brother attended.
“I didn’t even apply to any other schools,” she said. “I just went there and got accepted.”
She focused on film and television production with aspirations of working for a big entertainment company. She briefly moved back to Maine after graduating in 2001, taking on a job with Maine Public Service Company (now Emera Maine) and also at WAGM Television in Presque Isle. From there, she returned to Massachusetts, where she met her husband, John Gibson, through mutual friends.
They soon moved to Texas and, after a couple years, decided to travel back to Maine for their wedding in 2004.
“We wanted to get married in the fall,” she said, “so our Texas friends could experience a real Maine wedding.”
At home in Texas, Kane-Gibson worked for Fox for over a decade in the promotions and marketing department.
“I mostly edited ads,” she said. “My job was to try to get you to watch TV.”
Her next career move would be as a public information officer in Hutto, Texas, just outside Austin, where she said she “got the bug for downtown events, economic development, and how it all jives together.”
During her time in Hutto, she worked on a massive restoration project, in which a plot of city-owned land that once housed gin farming facilities was transformed into a 35-acre spot now known as the Hutto Co-Op, which offers residents business, recreation, retail, and even housing opportunities.
Even though she lived in Texas for about 14 years, she never once told anyone she was from that part of the country, and instead always instinctively told others she was from Maine.
Because of this strong connection to her home state, she didn’t hesitate to take on the job as marketing and events coordinator in her hometown in 2017.
She and her family currently reside in Caribou, and love taking spontaneous weekend trips exploring the less traveled portions of Maine. As she put it, “a lot of people like to stick to the I-95, but we like to travel the Route 11s.”
Her husband, John, now works as deputy director with the Aroostook County Emergency Management Agency, and she said they have no plans to move anytime soon.
“I love Caribou,” she said. “Even if you’re away, you can always come back. It’s always going to be home.”
