The People Behind The Pom-Poms
Cheer Through The Years is a husband-and-wife project — built on one woman’s lifelong relationship with cheerleading, and the shared instinct of two people who love building experiences worth remembering.
Marley Gibson
Marley Gibson has been a cheerleader for most of her life — pom-poms, sidelines, and school spirit woven into her story since she was young. That same season of her youth turned out to carry far more weight than anyone could have guessed: a nagging issue in her left leg, the kind an active teenage cheerleader might otherwise have shrugged off, turned out to be a tumor. It was caught, in large part, because cheerleading kept her tuned in to her own body.
Years later, that same diagnosis led to the amputation of Marley’s left leg. She speaks about it openly, without self-pity, and with the same spirit she brought to the sidelines. In the foreword to her novel Radiate, a fictionalized telling of a teenage cheerleader’s own cancer discovery, she puts it simply:
That belief — that cheerleading is bigger than a uniform or a routine, that it shapes people and sometimes even saves them — is the heart of Cheer Through The Years.
Radiate
Marley is the author of Radiate, a novel that fictionalizes her own discovery of cancer as a teenage cheerleader. The book has resonated with readers for the same reason Marley’s own story does — it shows how something as ordinary as a cheer practice can lead to a life-changing discovery, and how resilience gets built one routine at a time.
Marley with readers at a Radiate signing.
Patrick Burns
Patrick Burns will tell you, with a grin, that he isn’t a cheerleader — he’s a cheerleader’s cheerleader. He’s spent years cheering Marley on from the sidelines of her own story, and now he’s her full partner in bringing Cheer Through The Years to life.
Together, Patrick and Marley run Exploration Point, a travel agency based in Savannah, Georgia. Patrick is something of a local fixture in his own right — known around town as “the guy in the kilt,” he’s been leading walking tours through Savannah’s historic streets since 2014.
It’s that same instinct for storytelling and hospitality — turning history into something people want to walk through and remember — that shaped Cheer Through The Years as much as Marley’s decades on the sidelines did.
Marley, Through The Years
Bring The Exhibit To Life
Want to know more about the story behind Cheer Through The Years, or bring it to your event?
Get In Touch