(BP) — It wasn’t too long ago Eddie Gibson was visiting the Dellanna West O’Brien School in Liberia, ducking in and out of classrooms, talking and laughing with the teachers and students.
He remembers working hard to get some ceiling tiles fixed, so the school would be the best it could be.
The Dellana West O’Brien school building was destroyed when a man in the community who was angry over a land dispute allegedly drove a bulldozer through the campus.
But Gibson went back to a different scene March 31.
Some weeks before, a man in the community who was angry over a land dispute allegedly drove a bulldozer through the buildings on the school’s campus.
“Everything is down—pillars, foundations, everything,” Gibson said. “To do anything else with the school, we would have to take everything down and rebuild.”
For him, it’s heartbreaking and personal. A Liberia native, Gibson graduated from Liberian Baptist Theological Seminary before fleeing to Alabama during the country’s civil war in 1990. His heart stayed tied to Liberia, and he felt God had given him a vision to build schools there.
One was the Marla H. Corts Mission School, a pre-K to ninth grade school in Gibson’s hometown named after the widow of former Samford University President Tom Corts. Another was the Dellanna West O’Brien School, named after the late national Woman’s Missionary Union executive director. That school is located outside Monrovia, Liberia, and serves preschool through high school students.
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