Tish Gibbs (Elizabeth Villa “Tish” Gibbs) has died at age 85. We will miss her greatly. Tish’s friendship, advice, guidance, and advocacy will continue to have an impact on the Carver community for many years to come.

Carver knows Tish mostly as Executive Director of N/NSCP, a Sister City partnership between the people of Nagarote, Nicaragua, and Norwalk.

But that role and her many others through the years are not why we loved Tish so very much. Instead of counting career achievements here, though they are many, we simply want to thank her for teaching us, for loving us, for connecting us to her wonderful world, and for being in our lives.

We made our connection to NicPhoto because of Tish. From 2011 to 2015, Carver high school students partnered with NicaPhoto (not an N/NSCP program) to learn alongside their peers in Sonrisa de Dios (Smile of God), one of the poorest barrios in Nagarote, Nicaragua. The students shared photography, poetry, and stories via Skype and other digital means. A coffee table book based on this cultural exchange was published in 2014. Our students traveled to Nicaragua to help the students there establish this organic garden by which the young people learn about growing their own food, organic gardening, and healthy eating. Ronnie Ellen Maher, Founder and Executive Director of NicaPhoto, first visited Nagarote in 2005 as an N/NSCP volunteer.

Through her storied political and charity work and her myriad other interests, Tish will be remembered by Carver as a sparkling and burning light who illumined, inspired, and guided us to lead lives as joy-filled and giving as hers. Her infectious ebullience, curiosity, enthusiasm, and love nourished and guided us all. She showed us what we could be and how we could give of ourselves evermore.

What did Tish teach us? That it's all achingly beautiful; to be of service and generous; to relax, and to remember to have fun and adventures.