Rosalie Ann Gibson was born and bred in St. Louis, Missour-uh. A true product of the Show-Me-State, there is no other way to pronounce it. Daughter of Roy Franklin Gibson and Marion Hulda Deppen, she had three loving sisters: Rita, Roberta and Ruth. 

A tom-boy at heart, she could beat the boys in baseball and proudly earned the nickname Mickey in grade school when she hit a game winning home run like Mickey Mantle. After that, she refused to be called Rosalie.

A graduate of Webster Groves High School, she served on the debate team with her good friend, Barbara Field. Mickey obtained her undergraduate degree at the University of Kansas, where she was a proud member of the Chi Omega Fraternity. A photo of her pledge class still hangs in the chapter room. (Or so, she always told us—at least, it was still there, the last time we checked in the 90’s.) 

Her favorite cheer—Rock Chalk, Jayhawk, KU. She so enjoyed rooting on the KU football and basketball teams, and all her home town favorites.  

As a student in Lawrence, she loved to take the train back and forth to the Kirkwood station to spend time with her sweetheart, Harold Duke. After graduation, Harold and Mickey married, moved all around Indiana and Kentucky and eventually back to St. Louis, all while having six children—Ann, Laura, Penny, Tad, Becket and Koren.

You had to bring your A game to the dinner table—eating as a family was a must, being drilled in state capitals, Civil War battles, presidents, art, and more. An avid historian, Mickey enjoyed sharing stories and artifacts. Family trips were often live lessons in history. 

A voracious reader, she was rarely without a book on hand and instilled in all of us a great love of reading. 

Holidays were the greatest events. Thanksgiving stuffing and tasty pies. She baked the best Christmas cookies and organized neighborhood caroling. Dickens would have said, she ‘kept Christmas well.’

While her kids were getting their college degrees, Mickey went back to school and earned her Masters in Education from UMSL and later worked in the IT Department of AG Edwards.

And although she made raising her kids her number one career, we all know she really could have been a professional race car driver. Her grandson Taylor once told her she drove just like Michael Knight. Thinking about her speed, Danica Patrick had nothing on her. 

And while each of her kids grew up believing they were her favorite, her real loves were her grandchildren—Taylor, Truman, Danielle, Wesley, Emily, Caroline, Gabriella, John James, Maria Grace, Louis and Layne. Nana, as she was lovingly named by the oldest, never met a zoo train she didn’t like. She was the first to holler when it entered the tunnels and the last one to get off at every station. She helped us all make many wonderful memories in Forest Park, Tower Grove Park and the Missour-uh Botanical Garden.

There really are no words that can truly describe our Mom and Nana. A high school classmate of Tad’s recently recalled her as a gracious Lady. 

As the glue that held her family together, she is greatly missed.