Many ministries mark Geller's service to city

By Libby James
Correspondent

About Community Cornerstone Nominations

The Rev. Bob Geller excused himself before having his picture taken, then returned to his favorite rocking chair with a colorful, beaded bolo tie around his neck.

"My trademark," he confided. "People won't know me without it."

Little chance. In his 45 years in Fort Collins, Geller has touched countless lives in the community and at Colorado State University where he served as campus minister until his retirement in 1990. Last September, in celebration of his 85th birthday, friends and supporters gathered to honor him and raise funds for the Geller Center for Spiritual Development, formerly United Campus Ministry.

Fort Collins was a town of 25,000 when Geller; his wife, June; three sons and daughter arrived.

"It was a good time to come," he said. "The town was about to explode."

He came with the notion that "town versus gown" was not a good idea, and quickly familiarized himself with his new home, noting the farmers and bankers, who held positions of power, and the neighborhoods like Spanish Colony, Buckingham and Andersonville with unpaved streets and no running water.

Convinced that students who made Fort Collins their home for a time should become involved in the community, he set about finding ways to make that happen. From small beginnings, the list grew. Naming all the organizations that got their start through United Campus Ministry and were often housed there in their infancy isn't feasible. Here's a partial list: Black Student Services, International Student Center, Student Crisis Hotline, The Point Drug and Alcohol Center, Fort Collins Interfaith Council, Peace and Justice Center, Downtown Food Bank, Women's Crisis Center, Students' Alcoholics Anonymous, Day Care Center for Married Students, the Children's Clinic and Volunteers Clearing House, now known as Education and Life Training Center.

Geller's goal was to identify a need on the campus or the community, give it a solid start and then turn it over to either the campus or the community. Especially close to his heart is the Education and Life Training Center because it met diverse needs from education to day care to vocational education and life skills training. Care-a-Van developed through the center and eventually grew into the present-day Fort Collins handicapped-accessible bus system.

Until he moved into Dalton to attend high school, Geller called Mud Springs, Neb., home. The place was so tiny and rural that the best way to describe the size was to note that there were 12 farms on the shared telephone line. There was no post office. He and his four siblings walked to school - less than a mile, he admits. To be accepted into high school, they had to take an entrance exam at the county seat.

The Geller children did well, in part because both parents had been teachers before they turned to farming, and their home was known as one of the few in the area that had books - even an encyclopedia.

Geller's mother, originally from South Dakota, was an Irish Methodist. His father, of German Jewish descent, was raised a Roman Catholic. In Boston, where the family emigrated, Geller's grandfather was told if he wanted to be a cop, he'd have to be Catholic, so he complied. Geller has two cousins on his father's side who are Catholic priests.

In Mud Springs, the family became Protestants because that was the only option. Church was held in the schoolhouse on Sunday afternoons. Occasionally Geller's Catholic-Jewish relatives visited in Nebraska.

"I didn't know we weren't supposed to like Catholics or Jews," he said. "Same goes for African Americans. Most of the railroad section crew I knew were black, and we were friends."

Geller finished eight years of rural school in seven, then moved to town where he received an excellent education in science, biology, Latin and German. Through his involvement with the Boy Scouts, he won a trip to the Jamboree in Washington, D.C. Because he graduated second in his class, he earned a scholarship to Hastings College (worth $150, half a year's tuition at the time).

Geller majored in speech and economics with a concentration in money and banking, but he was also interested in the clergy.

"That's where I learned that a little money put away can become a lot of money in a lifetime," he said. "It was easy. I earned $100 as an intern; $10 went to the church, $10 to savings and the rest I lived on."

He met June, a music and math major, at Hastings College, and they married while he was at McCormick Theological Seminary in Chicago. After graduation in 1944, he went to the coalfields of West Virginia as part of the Labor Temple of New York City, a controversial ministry to the industrial movement.

As the monthly reports he was required to write about his mission activity in West Virginia became mundane and repetitious, he started adding his own commentaries. Much to his surprise at age 26, on the basis of his writings, he was invited to give a series of lectures at Princeton Seminary. Before he left, the school awarded him an honorary doctor of divinity.

In 1949, Geller became Presbyterian campus minister at Oklahoma University in Stillwater. Six years later, after building a new center at the school, he accepted a similar position at the University of Arizona in Tucson. There he resurrected a campus ministry and emphasized an ecumenical approach, working closely with Baptists, Methodists, Disciples of Christ, Congregationalists, Catholics and Mormons.

Because of his agricultural roots, Geller felt immediately at home when he came to CSU. His work required so much counseling that he enrolled in the Menninger Foundation in Topeka, Kan., where he earned certification in marriage and family counseling and a master's degree in sacred theology through Dubuque University. Soon afterwards he began to supervise counseling students at CSU.

For 38 years he served as chaplain for Woodward Governor Co. in Fort Collins. During the days when coats and ties were the dress code, Geller showed up for a company photo wearing his trademark bolo. When that was frowned upon, he changed into a clerical collar atop a purple shirt.

These days Geller doesn't always make it to the peace demonstrations he helped start years ago because he's full-time caregiver for June, disabled by severe arthritis. But now and then on a Saturday, he shows up at the corner of Mulberry and College. A small man, quiet and gentle, with a sparkle in his eye, Geller doesn't look the part of a radical.

"I believe one should exhaust working within the system first before opposing it," he said. "Most of my life, I've worked within the system."

He sees Fort Collins as a place "way ahead in humanization of society, with endless resources, many of them free." His optimism about his hometown is balanced by pessimism regarding the future of the country.

Does he have a philosophy? "Lots of 'em," he said. "Think about this: the words listen and silent are formed by the very same letters." Geller has done more than his share of listening over the years. "I still do it," he said, "but I no longer accept fees."

Every Friday morning, as he has for the past 39 years, he's at the Geller Center for Spiritual Development facilitating a most unusual book group that "reads around the academic disciplines," and every year he devotes four weeks to reading and discussing poetry - their own as well as the works of others.

In honor of his birthday celebration Geller wrote the following:

I am a collection of all my years
Enriched with
Your life stories,
Your glories,
Your troubles,
Your tears.
Tales of your lifetimes
Live in my eyes
So I am 85 years wise.
You are my connections
To faraway places
That live in my thought
Of good times and dear faces.
Your histories shine in me
and
Fill me with light.
I am 85 years old
And wise.

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