Gretchen Geller, Nurse & Teacher
Oral History Transcript of Gretchen Geller
Interviewers: Aubrey Jaap & Clark Grant
Interview Date: June 26th, 2021
Location: Butte-Silver Bow Public Archives
Transcribed by Clark Grant, September 2022
Clark Grant: [testing audio equipment] Let me turn the metronome off. Test.
Aubrey Jaap: Okay. Screw this thing. Don’t worry about it. Oh, sorry. We're just gonna hide this in like a shame pile, wasted funds. [laughter]
Grant: I'm sorry about that.
Gretchen Geller: No one knows.
Jaap: No one needs to know.
Geller: Okay, good. I forgot it already.
Grant: Okay. Ready to roll anytime.
Jaap: We're good.
Grant: Yep.
Jaap: Okay. Alright. It's June 26th, 2021. We're here with Gretchen Geller. Gretchen, I would just like you to first start off - tell me a little bit about your family's history. So like, your grandparents and parents - just kind of their backgrounds.
Geller: Okay. I can start with my mother's background. My mom's name was Dorothy June. Green - that was her maiden name. She grew up in what I’m guessing was upper middle class, maybe, but I don't know because I wasn't around then. [laughs]
[00:01:06]
But in the Midwest, in Kansas and Nebraska. Her dad was in the retail business. Her great grandfather was a Methodist minister and one of his last churches was in Sheridan, Wyoming. Her dad did not come by money from a big inheritance or anything. He just worked his butt off for many years in retail, for the most part. And then [he] became a vice president in a company that no longer exists called JM McDonald's. JM McDonald's was similar to Pennies or - yeah, Sears - same deal, but no longer exists.
So she grew up in the Midwest, Kansas and Nebraska. One of the interesting things about her dad is that when he was a teenager, his father decided that he wanted to take his family to Wyoming and to Yellowstone, just as Yellowstone became a park. And so I have a wonderful tape of my grandfather remembering that trip that he took with wagons, you know, big horses, and a wagon and his family - took a year. They just took him outta school, you know, I don't know.
Jaap: That's amazing. Yeah.
Geller: It is pretty amazing. And I wish he'd been a little more specific about things that he'd seen and done, but I wasn't there to interview him or prompt him. So I'm just grateful to have that tape. His name was Victor Green. His wife's name was Lucille. I'm trying to remember what her maiden name was. I'll think about it.
My mom had one brother whose name was Donald Keith Green. In retrospect, I think he might have been - a good chance that he was gay or transgender or something - at a time when it was sort of hard to even understand, I think. He died very early. He had one daughter who I've made contact with and have stayed friends with, which is - she lives in Washington state. So I'm grateful for that connection. He was in - would it have been world war II or the Korean war? I have his dog tags and his name was Donald Keith. I think I told you that. But I loved my uncle Bud. And when we did family visits, he was part of the reason that I liked the visits, because he was a really good guy.
[00:04:08]
My dad had more siblings. My dad was born and grew up in Western Nebraska on a wheat and cattle farm that his parents homesteaded. They had lived in South Dakota and homesteaded in this place in Western, Nebraska, near a town called, hmm, let me think about it. Oh, it will come to me. See, these are why I should have written things down. Tiny town - Dalton, Nebraska, tiny place.
The last time I was through there, I took my dad there, oh probably five years ago, a few years before he died. And he had gone to his high school reunion. He was by far - in his nineties and the only one from his class present and [laughs], but it was totally worth the trip. My husband and I - it wasn't easy because he was kind of complicated to travel with, because I think that's how it gets when you're 97 or however old he was. But we made the effort to go to his reunion. He was so proud to stand up and get recognized at that reunion dinner. Boy, I don't know what class that would've been that he graduated from high school. My dad was incredibly smart, but also he had a photographic memory. So [laughs - I remember we were living in West Africa for a year when I was a sophomore in high school. And they always sent Christmas letters and he - you know, somehow the address book - and this was long before you could put addresses in places and easily retrieve them. And my dad sat down next to me and he reiterated every address in that book and I wrote them down for him and we sent our Christmas letters. So that's an example of what kind of memory he had. It [was] pretty remarkable. We obviously watched that dissipate over the years. That was not how it lasted until he died. But pretty amazing guy.
So his name was Robert Geller. His parents were Frank and Flo Geller. Flo's maiden name was Brennan. And I have great memories of going to their farm from wherever we lived at the time. We usually went during wheat harvest because that's when they needed help. Not that I was much help, but I helped my grandmother cook. And I think she just liked having us there. So, that’s where I saw how you get chicken meat.[laughs] I learned how to go through that whole process of whacking a chicken's head off and watching them flip around the yard. And then [we] got lots of eggs, learned how to ride a horse, did a fair amount of hiking. I think I shot a rifle - the only time I've ever shot a rifle was at that ranch. I'm pretty sure.
[00:08:00]
I was shooting at rabbits, but of course, hit nothing. Good memories from that farm and being in Western Nebraska and I’m glad that I was able to take dad back there to the farmstead. It made him sad to be there.
Jaap: Did it make him sad?
Geller: Yeah. The house is basically falling apart unnecessarily. That house was a house that was - you could buy a house from Sears. So this was a Sears house that got added onto. But the barn was still intact and then there were some other outbuildings that had been built on there. He - our family no longer owns that ranch and, and haven't for a long time, but the guy who did own it was a family friend. Everybody was a friend there, you know, they were, all neighbors - still are all neighbors - and gave us permission to go on the property. And so it was good. [coughs] Can I take a break?
Jaap: Oh yeah, yeah. Whenever. Oh, oh for sure.
Geller: This is allergy time for me.
Jaap: Oh, it's horrible out right now. Yeah, man.
Geller: There's stuff floating in the air. It's like, I mean, visual yeah.
Jaap: I know - you wanna go outside and enjoy it. You just can't.
Geller: So, you know, it was a pretty major difference between the background of those two people who were my parents, which made it all the richer for me, I think in the end. When I first visited my grandparents on the farm, they had those phones where - the way that you knew that somebody was calling you was by the ring.
[00:09:47]
So it would be two shorts and a long, or three shorts, or three longs, or one long and three shorts. And then you would say, ‘oh, it's me.’ But it was a party line, you know. And if you would pick up the phone, somebody often was talking to somebody else. I was like [laughs] - it was such a weird scene. But I recall that quite vividly. On the other hand, when I visited the Greens, it was in a house that wasn't a farmhouse, in a town, with a fancy yard, and no party lines. But all in Nebraska, you know. Most of the visits that I made with my grandparents, my mother's family, were in Hastings, Nebraska.
She was born in a town north of Hastings - and it might come to me - about 20 miles away. But where we visited - her family was - where I remember it most was in Hastings, Nebraska, because they sort of settled there as my grandfather got older. And then when he left JM McDonald Company, he ended up working for a store - being a manager of a dry goods store in Colorado Springs, a place called Hibbards. I think it still exists. I'm not sure. Totally old fashioned kind of dry goods store where people still cut fabric for you, and yeah. A lot of my dresses in those early days were homemade by either my mom or other - yeah, usually my mom or grandmother or somebody like that. Sewing machines were part of our life. And I could go shop at my grandfather's store for the fabric and never had to pay - you know, it was a deal. [laughs] He paid and I walked out with the fabric. It was a good deal.
Jaap: That's perfect.
Geller: Yeah. What else?
Jaap: Well so how did your parents meet?
Geller: You know, they met at Hastings College in Nebraska. My dad was - I don't know how hard it is to be a valedictorian - or whatever it is - of a high school that has a graduating class of 11 or something like that but he was. And he got scholarships and that's how his college was paid for. My dad's major was so bizarre. It was economics; he was an economics major.
My mother was a very talented singer and a musician and she may have gotten some scholarships then. Eventually - if in those days they gave scholarships for voice and academics - but that's where they met. I actually lived in the hall, the same hall that my mom lived in, when she met my dad, because I went to Hastings College years later.
Jaap: Okay. Yeah, yeah.
Geller: Yep. Um, that's where they met. And my dad went to seminary then after Hastings College. I don't know. What do you do with an economics degree? You invest in the stock market, which as it turns out, has paid back our family and myself and those who I share money with quite well. Yeah, he was a very smart investor, but we - growing up, we didn't have much. If we really needed something, my mom would ask her family, her parents and - you know, like help with a down payment on a car. We never bought new cars. It was always used stuff. We didn't, well, ministers don't make much money, but we certainly were comfortable by most standards, I would say.
Jaap: When were you born Gretchen?
Geller: Nineteen forty five - nineteen forty five - post-war baby. Yeah, September, 1945.
Jaap: Grew up in Nebraska then?
Geller: Well, I wish I could say I have a hometown, but really - and I can now because my hometown is Butte. But my dad was a minister and that meant that we moved around a lot. So I was born in Sheridan, Wyoming actually, because my dad was in seminary and my mom was staying there with her parents who - my grandfather then ran one of those JM McDonald's stores in Sheridan. And my great grandmother was still alive and living with them in Sheridan. That's where I was born. When I joined - when mom and I joined my dad, he was still in seminary. So I lived for a short amount of time in the Chicago area. He went to McCormick Theological Seminary.
[00:15:04]
So we lived in a suburb of Chicago. I have almost no memories of that, except things that I've been told. It was a small apartment. It was hot as hell in the summer and yeah - I don't know what year he graduated. I know that during seminary, he had done some internships in Salt Lake City, for instance. That must have been interesting, being a Presbyterian minister in Salt Lake City. Maybe that was a test of his fortitude, I'm not sure. But his first job after seminary was in what used to be called the Board of National Missions in rural West Virginia. So that's - I have memories of West Virginia, and I have since been back to the house where I lived in, in that area. I was probably there about 10 years ago, just to see it again, and that helps with the memories too.
I lived there until, let's see, it would've been kindergarten, I guess. So the first few years of my life there, we lived in a big - it was - his assignment was at a mission school, the purpose of which was to provide education to the kids who were living in the Hills that didn't have access. So it was for boys and girls, and there was a girl's dorm and a boy's dorm. We lived in the girls dorm and were sort of the house parents, I guess, my mom probably was. There's a church, a Presbyterian church, on the grounds, which I visited that still functions. It still has my dad's name and stuff in the register. That was fun to go see that. It doesn't function anymore. It just sort of sits there.
The church is still functional, but the grounds - and the grounds are being kept up - but no one is using the buildings. One of my memories from that experience was that - the mission was near a river. I don't know the name of that river. The name of the town that it was closest to was called Ameagle, West Virginia, not that far from Charleston. But that river that ran near the mission - in the mind of a three year old, four year old - it was huge. When I went back to visit, you know, 10 years ago or so - it was like, ‘oh, this is more like a stream.’ Really, I mean it's nice and it's beautiful and it's moving, but it's not huge. I remember a suspension bridge that went over it and how scary that was to walk across it, but you really needed to walk across it in order to get to other places. My dad often carried me on his shoulders to visit parishioners and people's families because they did not have cars and where they lived was - you had to walk up these hills in that part of West Virginia. It's actually a very beautiful country, but still poor and still, yeah - I could go back there and hang out and be happy for a while I think. But remote for the east coast, pretty remote.
[00:18:58]
We moved from there - this was pretty drastic - my dad, I guess, decided that he wanted to become a university pastor. And so his first job at a university was at Oklahoma State in Stillwater, Oklahoma. And so that's where I started school. My mom did not work outside of the home anytime that I'm aware of, except at the church. She used her musical background and her degree directing choirs. Sometimes, I think she probably taught voice lessons. I'm guessing she did. But it was clearly - the division of labor was very clear and I didn't know anything else. Most of the people I came in contact [with], same deal. Dad went to work, mom stayed at home. She did the cooking, she took care of the house. She did cleanings, you know, oh scare me. Anyway, but that's how it was. Two of my brothers - is that possible or maybe all three - two of my brothers, yeah just two of my brothers, were born in Stillwater. My brother Mark, who is the closest in age to me, is five years younger.
My brother Tim was also born there, nine years younger than I. SO I went K-4th grade there. I remember that - speaking of allergies, we mentioned that earlier - that's where I got allergy tested and I remember - one of the things I remember was getting allergy shots every week that my dad administered. Now in those days, forget the syringes that you throw away. They were glass syringes and you reused the needle. So what you did after the shot was boil them again in a little pan. I remember the pan because the pan and the shot - I didn't look forward to this. So, funny things that you remember. Right. But the pan - I wish I had the pan, quite frankly. I wish I did. It was stainless steel. In the pan went the water and the syringe and the needle and yeah - 15 or so minutes later then the shots were pulled up and then I had two shots, one in each arm.
It was…pollen. I can't remember what kind of pollen, but God knows in Oklahoma, there's plenty of it. And animal dander and cat hair and all that kind of stuff, which of course is not - and I'm still allergic to that stuff, but I have a cat, you know? So, those are the decisions you make later.
[00:21:57]
I don't think we had a dog at that time. I don't think we had pets, but I remember we had - my dad having been on the farm, it was important for them to grow their own vegetables. So we had a big vegetable garden there and my mom was really into flowers. In those days, she was able to keep up with a garden herself and…yeah, I remember that house quite well. It'd be fun to go back and see it if it's still standing. I'm trying to remember some things about that - going to school - oh, that was pretty important. Speaking of things that I clearly needed to help me. You know, my first grade teacher, or maybe it was the kindergarten teacher said, you know, this girl seems like she's pretty smart, but she's not able to pick up on reading very quickly, you know?
So why don't you get her eyes tested? Hello? I've got my glasses on today. I mean, bad astigmatism, apparently. [laughs] So I was like - I didn't really know that there was separation between, you know, these letters all were in a long row and it's like, how do you mean it's like - how do you spell what? I was not getting it. So I got a pair of glasses. I'm sure my grandparents helped with that and my folks had money for that kind of stuff. So I got a pair of glasses, and it made a big difference in how well I did in school. Apparently I succeeded after that. I remember some of my teachers - I think Miss Abernathy was my first grade teacher. And I remember her because she was very kind and she was obviously the person that got it about what my problem was with reading.
And then I remember my fourth grade teacher who was a total witch and boy - I was a teacher for a part of my life, and so it was a good way to learn how not to be a teacher. Yeah. She whacked people with the rulers, you know, the typical stuff - on the head. She'd pull your hair. I mean just [a] mean lady. Well that would've been in the mid fifties I guess, when that was going on. Yeah. But I survived her - Sherlock. That was her name. I mean, isn't that weird - that her name was Sherlock? Not a good association for the other guy we know - but yeah, that was her name.
Tough! My dad left Oklahoma State and moved to the University of Arizona in Tucson. So I went fifth grade through ninth grade there in Tucson and then spent a year in West Africa in 10th grade, went back to Tucson for 11th grade - the deal with this sabbatical was you can come back. You get a year, you come back for a year, at the same job. So he did his year and then he moved. So my senior year in high school was in Fort Collins, Colorado, so that was pretty disruptive: four years of high school in three different places, one of them being in West Africa. But you know, in retrospect it probably had a major influence on the person that I became too. So I'm not unhappy about that.
[00:25:44]
Jaap: What was it like in West Africa? Tell me a little bit about that.
Geller: Well, my dad - his sabbatical appointment was at a college that still exists in Freetown, Sierra Leone called Fourah Bay College. Sierra Leone was a former British colony, so I unfortunately didn't have to learn French - so we spoke English, although there were obviously native languages there. The people in Sierra Leone still, - I’m sure, but I haven't been back to visit, I'd love to go - spoke a sort of pigeon kind of English which I hear on the radio every once in a while. And it sounds like stuff that I've heard spoken in the Caribbean, you know. So I mean - those folks were slaves, hello. Not so many out of Sierra Leone - a lot more out of Ghana, where I also lived later in my life.
I went to a girls, of course, Anglican secondary school. It was kind of hard to figure out where I belonged because they start a subject in their first year of high school and then continue that subject and then add some subjects, and the complication [accumulates] as you go through the fifth form. So at first I was placed in the second form. You wore uniforms, you know - it was a pretty big - [laughs] - from a little bit of makeup and curling hair and crinolines. Do you know what crinolines are?
Jaap: What are crinolines?
Geller: Well, crinolines are these - were these - slips that were made out of netting that you stuck under a regular skirt to make it poof out. It’s like – spare me. Did I really do that? Well, yeah, we all did that, because that was the fashion - major skirt stick out. And so my first day at the school, whose name was Annie Walsh Memorial School - it still functions. I've been on their website and I've tried to communicate with them, but I've not been able to do that well from a distance.
My uniform was dark green, with this weird orange piping around the sleeves and around the bodice - ugly. I think it must have had something - it was long before you could embroider with sewing machines - so it must have had some kind of patch on it. I wish I had the dang thing. I mean, wouldn't I love, I would love to have that old uniform. I would really love it.
Anyway, I wore a crinoline with my uniform the first day. And I hadn't been at the school more than 10 minutes, maybe until a sixth former came up to me, big woman - or girl, hello - and she grabbed my crinoline and pulled it down to the ground and said, ‘we don't do that here.’ And I just was like, ‘oh my goodness, what - where am I? What have I done?’ Obviously a big transgression. My parents were clueless. I mean, we didn't know. So that's how it started. It was a little rough - didn't wanna go back.
[00:29:30]
I was put in the second form and then they caught on and I got moved up to the third form. There were two other white girls there, both from England. I wish that I still had contact with them. Their parents were there for various reasons, but not missionary sort of work - not religious work. It was connected to the Anglican church somehow, so part of what you studied was religious studies and they had chapel every morning, and made announcements and prayed and all that kind of stuff. The saving grace for me was that they had a piano - and I had already been studying piano lessons since I was little. [I] probably started that - I know I started that in Stillwater. So they had a piano at Annie Walsh that was on the stage in their big hall. And so I took a lot of piano books with me. I would practice there on the weekends, when I could get in and I also played hymns for their - I was their organist on a piano. [to self] Did they have an organ there? I don't think so. I don't think I ever played the organ there. But that was a way that I could contribute. It was clearly something that other girls could not do. I don't know whether that was a good thing or a bad thing, but I did make friends with other people in my form. I got over the initial outrage. [laughs] I never wore a crinoline again.
But it was a British system where you study for a term - you have - in fact, I still have some of those books where - each class had a book that you took notes in. And that instead of having - I don't remember having textbooks as such - the teacher made the lectures, you took the notes, and they would look at your - they would often give you notes and then they would grade your book too, to make sure that you were - they wanted to see that on a weekly basis.
And then you had big exams at the end of each term in every subject, including goofy stuff like cooking and - because I was a girl - I mean, hello, gotta take cooking! Yeah.
Jaap: Gotta take cooking…
Geller: Yeah. What else do you do? And domestic science or something like that where I think I probably learned to do some embroidery and that. Yeah. But that was a good experience and - Sierra Leone - we were in Freetown, which is a big city, very diverse. Not just African people, but a huge Indian population there, east Indian population, and also a huge Lebanese population - people from the near east. So it was a good wake up call from even Arizona, although Arizona's very diverse. But everybody was mostly speaking the same language, although lots of Spanish being spoken in Tucson and a lot of native people in and around Tucson. But in terms of people from other countries, that was a good experience. Gorgeous beach. I'd never been - I'd been stuck inland, so lots of good memories of being in the ocean and watching fishermen boats come in, and watching that whole process, finding all kinds of cool stuff on the beach. Yeah, that was a good experience, in retrospect. I was sad to leave, but it was a year commitment and so - back to Tucson after a year of that.
[00:33:41]
And then - so I went back for my, that would've been my 10th - is that right? My junior year was in West Africa, I mean my sophomore year. So my junior year was back in Arizona, and then we moved to Fort Collins, Colorado, and my dad was a university pastor at Colorado State University. There were other denominations present on that campus - same as University of Arizona. And this was a union between the United Church of Christ, the Presbyterians, the Methodists - there may have been another denomination - that were part of this campus ministry that my dad was in charge of. Along the way, both in Tucson and in Fort Collins, dad was an assistant minister at a regular Presbyterian church, which were the places that we attended. He was an associate minister, I guess, is what you'd call it. So his funeral was in the place where he was an associate minister in Fort Collins. Yeah. Big, you know, the big scene - big church, big windows, big choir scene. Yeah.
Jaap: Did those ministers move around? Did they stay generally for a certain time at a place or was it kind of - they could leave when they wanted to?
Geller: Well, you know, he stayed in Fort Collins for the rest of his life. So, I'm not sure what prompted those moves. It certainly wasn't about more money. When we were in Fort Collins, we were a lot closer to his family than in Arizona. We were a long - it was a big, long trip to help with the wheat harvest, for instance, or to visit my grandparents who were then living in Colorado Springs. So that may have been part of the impetus. We were really close to Western Nebraska in Fort Collins, and so it was about two and a half hours drive either direction and we were with grandparents. That might have been part of what was going on. But yeah, he didn't leave there then. He was there then - and it was in Arizona that my youngest brother was born. Vic was born in Arizona.
I was in fourth grade. I was at a Halloween party at the church. And I knew that my dad and my mom were at the hospital and my dad called somebody at the church to let them know that I had a new brother. So that brother was born on Halloween. Yeah. That was in Tucson. You know, in retrospect, a lot of that moving around - and I did a fair amount of moving around as an adult - I've lived in Butte the longest that I've lived anywhere in my life. And I think we moved here in ‘93. So this is my hometown. I never had one before. It's not really my hometown. If I said that to a Buttian, they would say, ‘I don't think so, honey.’ [laughter]
Jaap: You have to have a few generations to be able to say that. [laughs]
Geller: Yeah. But here I am. It feels like home to me. I'm so happy that we haven't moved around. I did not wanna do that to my own kid. I think in many ways it was disruptive. I try to see the - what it did for me in terms of offering me diverse diversity in terms of cultures, and it certainly influenced choices that I made later. I went to Hastings College and then I immediately went to the Peace Corps in West Africa, you know? So it's like - I’m sure I wouldn't have been so interested in the Peace Corps or in going to Africa, had I not been there first and had a good experience - or had I not had parents who were very supportive of that kind of exploration of the world, I guess. My kid went to the Peace Corps [laughs]. She spent her time in Senegal in West Africa - yeah, we sort of have a family history.
[00:38:10]
My husband, Butch Gerbrandt, has a Mennonite background and he did an alternative service in Bolivia, as a teacher. But he lived in Mexico as a child with his family who were missionaries to the - there's a huge Mennonite population in Mexico, by the way, that are farmers. Yeah, it's odd - in Northern Mexico - and so that's where he became pretty darn proficient at Spanish and then went to Bolivia after his first college degree, his BA, and taught school for a couple of years. We both remain very connected to service in other places, service in general, [we] see the value of - in many ways, the value added to our own lives by going to other places besides the United States.
So my dad - I remember when we were in Tucson (or I think it was while we were in Tucson) - was in Puerto Rico for the summer. And then later in his life, while they lived in Fort Collins - I was out of the home by then - he took sabbaticals in New Zealand, not once, but twice. They made lots of friends there. My brothers went to high school there. One of them was the assistant director of the Christchurch Symphony there. I've got a brother that's a pretty serious musician. That's brother Tim, who is the one that's nine years younger than I am. Yeah, between music and fly fishing, I think that's pretty much his life.
I've not been to New Zealand. I would love to go to see these places that my parents loved so much. So maybe one day.
Jaap: How did you and Butch meet?
Geller: We met - let's see. So I have to kind of track…after I came back from the Peace Corps - by the way I was married before I went to the Peace Corps and while I went to the Peace Corps - with a guy named Ken. I met him - in the summer, I was going to New York city to work in day camps that were connected to Presbyterian churches. So we just - we had kids that were in grade school that were there. They needed lunch for one thing. And we did, you know -we took 'em to the park. We took ‘em for trips to museums and to the zoo. I mean, I'd never lived in New York. I'd flown in and out of there on our way to Africa, but never lived in New York City.
So I was there one…two - I'm trying to think if it was two or three - well, I was actually there three summers in a row. But I met Ken there. He is from Alabama and still lives in Alabama, God help him. [laughs] He lives in his parents' home. He didn't always live there. Ken and I remain friends. We went our separate ways after the Peace Corps. I went to York, Pennsylvania. That's where I landed, finally. And he ended up in New York State and then went to grad school, did the whole PhD process. I can't even remember where he did all that. But that's where we went our separate ways, but yeah, we remain friends. I'd love to see him again. We just stay in touch, you know, on birthdays and holidays. I have a big picture of his whole family on my fridge. He's got a big family. I have a little family. He has a big family.
[00:42:41]
But from York, Pennsylvania, I met a man - this is all coming down to Butch, but it's later, you know? I met a man who unfortunately is no longer alive. His name is Rob Horwich. If you look up Community Conservation - I think it's called Community Conservation…maybe it's just called Community Conservation. I give money to them. I should know the name of it. But he was a wildlife biologist and taught biology and wildlife management and so forth in Michigan, but he lived in Chicago. I met him because he had been hanging out with friends in Pennsylvania.
I don't know how he talked me into leaving what I was doing there because I was pretty happy. I had some interesting jobs there. I don't know how much detail you want me to go into, but -
Jaap: You're perfect. Yeah.
Geller: When I first moved there, I didn't have much money. I had some friends that helped me get an apartment, and then I started teaching school because in those days - I had been a teacher in West Africa in Ghana, so you didn't need a teaching - I didn't have a teaching degree. I had a biology degree, but if you had a BA in anything - man, they were desperate. So apparently - because you just had to show your diploma and you got a temporary teaching certificate. So I taught school at a - it was a residential treatment center, is what we'd call it now. God, I can't believe we housed kids in that building, you know, fire code? Oh my goodness. I mean I'm sure it met the then standards, but it would - if the building still stands, it would not make it now.
But I taught at a one-room school actually, sort of like my grandmother had done in Nebraska. Actually that school where my dad attended the one room school is still standing, not far from the farm that I told you about. But my grandmother was a teacher and so was my grandfather before he did full time teaching. He was a high school teacher.
[00:45:13]
So I started teaching in that one room - I had kids that were six and I had kids that were seventeen in the same classroom. It meant lots of different preparations. We were associated with a school in town so that they could get credit going to school. And the idea would be to slowly transition them to a regular classroom. Not all of the kids there were out of a regular classroom - some went to school from there, but a lot of them didn't. That was crazy. I'd love to see that room again. I have photographs of it. It's like, how did I…well, I had lots more energy than I have now, apparently - didn't sleep much.
I met a guy that was a person that was our principal and started a used bookstore with him. And so I left the teaching - I did that for a couple years, and then it was a used bookstore. And then not long after that bookstore got started, he and I were in a very bad car accident. We had been on a book buying trip in Pennsylvania, and we had his vehicle full of cars [books] - very close to York, on an interstate. He had been drinking, which was really stupid. And we - he came up very quickly on a big truck that wasn't going nearly as fast as we were, stepped on his brakes, it was raining. The highway was wet. And we started doing 360s and landed in the borrow pit, which would've not have been particularly scary, except one of these things that holds up road signs that has a very forked bottom - that’s how you get it into the ground. It's like an arrow, it's a metal arrow that you use to tamp it into the ground.
That arrow came through the bottom of the car and into Bob's right flank, and resulted in him dying in ICU probably four or five days later. So my business partner, my livelihood - yeah. Didn't get much out of the bookstore that I had put into it money-wise because he had a family and of course I had no - I had nothing to prove that I had any money invested in that store.
[00:48:06]
It'd be interesting to go back to York and see if those buildings even exist still. I'm guessing - York's pretty smart about historic preservation - so I'm guessing that this place may still be there. Well, it was pretty rough and I ended up - I lost the place that I was living in because I couldn't pay the rent, of course. And so one of the teachers at the school that I had been associated with said, ‘you could come and live with me for a while, take care of my kids.’ She was still working. This happened in August - it was just as school was starting. So here's a place for you to live. You can take care of the kids and then look for a job.
The first thing I did was figure out how to go to apply for public assistance. And at the same time I applied for a job at the public assistance. So I got public assistance for about five weeks, and then I got a job there, you know? Well, I guess I got a job that helped - the public assistance that I got, and I can't remember how much money - it was probably for about a six week period, and food stamps. So that was an experience. Meanwhile, I can only imagine that my parents were pulling their hair out saying, ‘oh my goodness, what have you done?’ But that wasn't a bad experience in retrospect, a little scary, but not - and certainly when I worked for public assistance, it gave me another view of how a lot of people have to live.
So I did that job and - I’m trying to remember - okay. After that job - meanwhile, all that crazy race stuff was going on in New York city and in the big cities, a lot of bad stuff. I mean, people were being killed - and that stuff came to York, Pennsylvania, but not quite as bad. In fact, most of that went on before I got there - it happened in 67, 68, 69. I didn't get to York until late 69. So I was there after the shooting stopped, but part of what happened after that was that a lot of federal money came into the inner city places in those bigger cities, like York, Pennsylvania - I don't know - a couple hundred thousand people, probably.
So I went to work at a daycare center that served - it was called Crispus Attucks Daycare Center. You know, I didn't even know who Crispus Attucks was until I took that job, but I became well educated. But I was their social worker. So I visited families, made sure that the kids were getting something to eat, helped them through all that process. I did that for a couple of years and that's - I was doing that when I met Rob - and I don't even remember how the heck I did, except that he was at a party and I was at a party or something like that. And he just - he owned this place in Chicago. And then he also had just purchased a farm in Western Wisconsin. And he said, ‘I'd really like somebody to come to the farm in Western Wisconsin to be there, but you could also stay in Chicago for a while if you want to.’ God, that was not my favorite place to live, but I lived there briefly on my way to Wisconsin.
[00:52:00]
He was the primatologist for the Brookfield Zoo in Chicago. My major was biology, you know, in college. So I was totally interested in what they were doing and in his research. So eventually we got - he sold the place in Chicago and we moved to the farm in Western Wisconsin. That farm is still there and I visited it different times and - just a beautiful setting - had a big garden there. Started a co-op there in that little town, a place called Soldiers Grove, near, well - rural. Soldiers Grove and Gays Mills. The co-op was started in Gays Mills.
And that co-op continues today. I feel pretty proud of having been a part of that whole scene. Rob was gone a lot because he was still doing research and he was doing research overseas. He was in India. He was in - had a big project going on in Central America. But he was one of the prime movers in the world of community conservation, where you go to these communities that live in places where you wanna conserve the animals and get the people there on board with helping to preserve the animal habitat - the habitat and the animals themselves.
So I wish - his first project was in Belize. I wish I had been there. I never traveled to Belize, but he had projects in India and Belize and - wow. He had projects in the United States. One of his - one of the most interesting things was that he - [laughs] I have this crazy picture of him in a crane costume. I'm not kidding you - a big beak and these wings and a head cover - because he was interested in teaching baby cranes to imprint on the adults so that they would in fact do what the adults wanted them to do. I mean, he was a major force in the preservation of whooping cranes in the United States. So that was not dull. I mean, living with Rob was not dull. It was a good experience, but he was gone a lot and it didn't seem like the relationship was going too much too well. But I stayed in that part of the country.
I taught school there again, also a special ed classroom with multiple grades. I also, for a long time, worked for a wood stove company in Lafarge, Wisconsin. It was called Kickapoo Stoves, which is named after a river that drains into the Wisconsin river, which drains into the Mississippi river.
When I was there, I learned a lot about my dad's background because some of his dad's family was still - aunts and uncles were still in Wisconsin. So I met an aunt and an uncle that were commercial fishermen on the Mississippi. I went to places where my great grandparents had lived, you know, the farmstead in rural Wisconsin. So I saw that place - no longer there - but I have been there. And then of course, graves of my great grandparents, in Wisconsin, in small towns in Wisconsin. There was still one of my grandfather's sisters that was still alive. I met her. She was what they used to call an old maid. She, you know, never got married, but she was delightful and smart as heck and actually was a French - that's what her specialty was. And in those days, to travel to France? But she had been to France, not once, but twice and was a French teacher in Wisconsin, in rural schools.
So that was cool to kind of connect with my dad's history in that part of Wisconsin. That was before, of course, they got to Nebraska. But yeah, it was good. And that's where I learned to get really serious about gardening and agriculture, I guess. So yeah, Rob did me a big favor. I wish he was still alive. He'd been to visit us in Butte several times. But he was in West Africa, actually, I think in the Cameroons - he got very ill there. Instead of seeking help there, he waited for his ticket to come home. By the time he got home, he was very, very ill and died a few days later in Lacrosse, Wisconsin, which was a real tragedy - way before his time. But, he started this organization that continues to do his work, which is wonderful.
Jaap: Amazing.
Geller: Yeah. So it's called Community Conservation. And I feel like I was a little part of that. Yeah. So that's cool. So back - you asked a question about how I met Butch. When I was done with Wisconsin, I had been - in the summers with my folks - to a place in New Mexico called Ghost Ranch, which is where Georgia O’Keefe lived. It had been given by a very wealthy family to the Presbyterian church - thousands and thousands of acres. I don't know how many, but you know, in that world, 25,000 acres is what you need because it's so dry, you know? It had been a cattle ranch and they gave it to the Presbyterian church, and then it became a conference center for the Presbyterian church. And my dad would go there in the summer. We'd go there in the summer as a family. Well, he would do some seminars there. And so I was familiar with it from that - I was probably 10, 11 years old. They had a swimming pool. You know, it was cool.
So I went - they offer these - I’ve always been interested in archeology. I'm not sure why, what that is about - and paleontology, and geology too - I mean, Clark knows how many rocks are in my yard. It's like - I don't know what they are, but I like them. I mean, some of them, I know what they are. Were you on the hike with me when I carried the rock out from - yeah, pretty goofy. Pretty darn good sized rock. Yeah, archeology. Okay. So I attended an archeology seminar and a dig in New Mexico. I still lived in Wisconsin and was like, ‘wow, I could live here. You know?’
[01:00:00]
So I asked the people at the ranch if I could work there, get a job. And they said, ‘sure, you can supervise the college staff that comes here in the kitchen.’ And so I moved to New Mexico, to Ghost Ranch. They gave me a room. I got my meals there. And I supervised the college staff, their kitchen staff there. So, we washed dishes. We helped prepare food. We served food to hundreds and hundreds of guests that came there. That was a big - it's a big operation. So that's how I got to New Mexico. And it occurred to me after a couple years of living at the ranch - I mean, this is grand, but where is this going? You know, by that time I was looking at 30, probably. At some point I moved off of the ranch because it - I mean, one room wasn't exactly like home.
So I moved to a little town near the ranch called Barranca or Barranco. I think it's probably Barranco, which is on the Chama River, probably 20 miles from the ranch near Abiquiu, which is where Georgia O’ Keefe then moved. She had a home on the ranch, which is still there, and she, but she had a home in Abiquiu, a tiny little town right on the Chama, in the hills up above the river - maybe five or six hundred people, something like that. But I worked at the ranch - I went one day to talk to the guy that was the ranch director and said, ‘you know, I love working here, but this is not a good long term plan. I'm gonna be 30 here pretty soon, probably.’ And it's like, this is - yeah. I wanna be a nurse. I wanted to be a nurse.
When I was at Hastings College, they had a nursing program there. My dad told me that all I would do would be a doctor's handmaiden. And he wouldn't, you know - he was helping pay for my education. ‘You wanna be a nurse? You're on your own, you know - you're about to graduate and I'm not - we're not going there.’
So I had a chance to be a nurse. I applied at the University of New Mexico. I didn't have any money. But the ranch gave me a thousand dollars and I borrowed a couple thousand from my dad and I moved to Albuquerque. And I got a job at a boarding school, a Presbyterian boarding school in Albuquerque where I was a tutor in the evenings for the kids there. And then they gave me a place to live. So that worked out pretty well.
And it was at the University of New Mexico that I met Butch, in a Country & Western dance class. Yeah. I mean, nobody else had any sense of rhythm, and Butch is a really good musician. You knew he had a band there right? Oh yeah. He was in a band. Anyway - the Half Fast Bluegrass Band. That's right. Yeah. Half fast. That's what it was. Yeah, I met him in a dance class. That's where I met Butch.
[01:03:31]
He and I have been married to each other twice.
Jaap: Really?
Geller: Yeah. Why not? [laughter] You know, if you mess it up the first time and you get another chance, you know, you might as well go for it. So the first time, we were married in New Mexico, at Ghost Ranch actually - had a bunch of his family, all my family. Our two dads married us because his dad was still alive. His dad was a Mennonite minister. I've got great photographs, in fact - Clark, in my house, which you're familiar with - right next to the bathroom on the first floor, there's a picture about this long and this skinny, a bunch of pictures of our first wedding. So yeah, that was a good thing. We lived in Albuquerque while I was going to - and he was finishing up his PhD. He had been an engineer for a while and then gone back to school to get his master's and his PhD. I don't remember exactly the - I don't remember - he was definitely working and I was in school, so he was finished, or semi-finished. I guess he was semi-finished because I remember going to his PhD ceremony - his parents were there when he graduated with his PhD. So I knew him before that was a sealed deal.
[01:05:07]
We went our separate ways a couple years later. I don't need to go into the dirt that preempted that. Butch got married in the meantime. I did not get married again. And then I worked in Albuquerque after I was a nurse. My first job was paying back the Presbyterian hospital system there with a year of service because they loaned me a bunch of money. So I worked for them. I never intended to be a hospital nurse - that was never my interest, but I did that. So I did my obligatory year. Then I worked as a nurse in Montana - the medium security prison in Montana - which was a big eye opener. Also before that, I worked in the juvenile detention center as a nurse in Albuquerque. That probably got me enough nerve to go to the big time after the juvenile detention center. Both of those places were pretty corrupt. Oof. It took a while to catch on, but, once I caught on, I was like, ‘mmm, I don't think I can be a part of this.’ I remember calling up a guy that was on call, a physician that was on call. I was still at the prison, and there'd been an accident with some of the prisoners that were doing road work - a pretty severe accident. And they brought this guy into the clinic, which had a little mini emergency room on the premises, and he was in bad shape. And I'm not a physician. I called the doctor on call and he was loaded.
[speaking drunkenly] You know, ‘well miss Geller…what do you think you should do? [laughter] It was one of those - and it’s like - this is not a good long term plan for liability, or support. So I quit about a month later - I gave my resignation. But I met some really good physicians, some really good committed people to that kind of work there. So I'm not sorry I had that experience, but I'm happy that I got out of there.
And then, pretty much after that, I did some more hospital work. That was not my - that was never my intention, but I got interested in child and adolescent psychiatry. That first started probably when I was working in the juvenile detention center. It's like, ‘oh my gosh, these kids didn't get here on their own!’ [laughs] They had a lot of help from their families and they didn't get the care they needed.
So I got a really good job at a place called Desert Hills, which was a child and adolescent treatment center. It had both residential and hospitalized kids. So it was acute care and residential care, care and daycare. So there were kids coming there, school-aged kids, and we actually had some kindergartners, so it was kids aged four to, you know, high school age.
That was one of the best jobs I ever had. I got paid really well. I worked my ass off. I didn't have much of a life because I was on call all the time when I wasn't at work. But I liked the work and I liked the progress that I saw with the kids. Uh, not everybody, you know - but there was remarkable turnaround for kids and their families once they had the opportunity to have what they needed, and medication, in some cases. Yeah, that was a good job.
And I really - I don't remember having boyfriends or any - well, who would've had the time for it? Um, yeah. And Butch called me up one day out of the blue and he said, ‘you wanna go out for dinner?’ Okay. I mean, I hadn't really been in touch with them that much, but he still lived in Albuquerque. So we went out to dinner and we started dating again a little bit. And then he was finishing his PhD. That's when I went to his PhD graduation ceremony. I mean, I remember going there with his parents. I'm sure his parents were thinking, ‘oh my goodness.’ I'm sure my parents were thinking, ‘oh my goodness.’
But then he asked me to come up here when he got the job at [Montana] Tech. We were not married then. It was like, ‘ohhh.’ It was a hard decision because that job I left was a job that I really cared about a lot. I made a big commitment, personal and finance, you know - it was paying me quite well.
But I did it! [laughs] I came up here with no job, and yeah. Followed him to Montana Tech. We got married in our present house at 412 West Broadway. There were probably - instead of 200 people there, there were probably six people there. Somebody had to be a witness, you know, we didn't do much celebrating, but I think we went to - not Townsend - we went to Cardwell, I don't know. Some place out of town for a night in a hotel and a big meal the next day. And I think that was our second honeymoon.
[01:11:15]
I mean, yeah, it was good. Our families were ecstatic, you know. I'm sure that weirded them out on some level, but they were ecstatic. And it's not like we didn't know each other by then.
Jaap: Right.
Geller: Yeah. It's like, yeah, I know. I know what I'm getting into. I know it well - nothing's changed. In that regard, people don't make major changes, I don't think…unless…Well, people are - they're capable of making major changes with help, but they have to think that they need it, you know? [laughter] Anyway, but Butch doesn't need too much help. And I get my own when I need it.
Grant: Can you come up to the mic?
Geller: Oh, yeah.
Jaap: You can move it back towards you if you want.
Geller: Oh, that's alright. I can relax.
Grant: I'm sorry we don't have a lapel [mic].
Geller: I can do this. Yeah, no.
Jaap: Yeah, if only we had a lapel mic. [laughter]
Geller: So, yeah, I remember driving around Butte thinking ‘what have I done?’
Jaap: Yeah. What were you thinking?
Geller: [whistles] What was I thinking? You know, visually, I was interested in the historic stuff, but visually it wasn't - a lot of places were not in great shape in ‘93. There wasn't a move to fix things up much. It was looking pretty rough. I was glad he had a job. I wasn't sure what I was gonna do for a job. We lived on West Mercury Street in a place that's still an apartment building on the 500 block of West Mercury. I think it was 514, in an upstairs apartment. We moved here with, you know, this U-Haul full of crap and two dogs. Did we have a kitty then? Yeah, I think we did. It was pretty nuts.
Our dog would just do goofy things like come back with a deer carcass, you know. [laughter] That was new. You know, that was typically Butte, but not something that I had anticipated at all about being here.
But I remember opening the Montana Standard. We still subscribe to the Standard. I like to read the paper copy. Clark knows from being in my home that the paper copy is one of the first things we look at in the morning - what happened last night? You know. [I was] just thinking, what have I done? You know, it's like - when I started looking for jobs it's…oh man. But it’s turned out really well.
Jaap: I mean, it was pretty depressed here when you got here. Cause you were here in ‘93.
Geller: Yeah.
Jaap: So, right. Like it's not - nothing really much is happening. Like, and nothing's been cleaned up in ‘93, so I imagine -
Geller: No, there was no clean up.
Jaap: It was not very pretty looking.
Geller: Nope. There were no trees. Yeah, it was pretty grim. I got a job at - it used to be called Desert - or no - it used to be called Children's Comprehensive Services or something like that. I had a good resume from Albuquerque. So the first job that I had there was - well, I know what happened. My first job was not there. My first job was working for the State. I got a job, because I was a nurse, I got a job as a person in a group of traveling people that traveled to nursing homes to do licensure and accreditation for nursing homes.
So I traveled the state, got to know Montana pretty well, Western and Northern Montana, sometimes in Eastern Montana, but I was never at home much. And even when they were in the office preparing the reports and so forth, I was driving to Helena. So I found a carpool and you know, was in up in the morning, joining my car pool at 6:30 in the morning to get to work at eight - and not getting home until, you know - in the winter it was dark to dark. It was like, ‘oh, this is…’
I got tired of the road. I did that for about a little over a year and then went to work - well, I know what happened. There was the second completed suicide at that juvenile detention or not detention - but child’s ‘supposed’ treatment center. And I can't remember the name of the company that owned it there. Was it Rivendale? It might have been Rivendale. And I was - having had the experience I had in Albuquerque, it was like, this should never have happened. Where were the staff, what were they paying attention to? Were they paying - well, they weren't paying attention. I was just blown away and angry.
[01:16:49]
And then this job comes in the paper and it was to be a victim - to be a - what would you call it? What was the title of that job? It was to be a patient advocate for that place. In other words, it was a patient advocate. And I'm sure that it was part of some kind of agreement that they made along with part of a huge lawsuit. I don't know how that all turned out, but they hired a bunch more staff and they hired a patient advocate. And that was my first job in child psychiatric care here. And it didn't take me long to - or them long to figure out that, you know, I had a good background. I don't know how long I did that job. Very soon, I became a supervisor of one of the units. I did that for a couple years and then I became - and those were the days of the beepers. Yeah, because I was a supervisor, you know, all the lovely things that happened in those places had to be called into me. We were still traveling to Colorado to visit family. And I was so happy when we'd go over the pass because the beeper never no longer had any - I couldn't get it. I was outta range. So I was like, ‘just take me off the list, folks, call somebody else.’ But it was pretty much an 80-hour a week job or more because you were on call. I was on call because of the management job when I wasn't there. And that kind of took a big toll.
Thank God for the garden. I think, you know, the garden became my therapeutic - well, I have the best, one of the best gardens that you've ever seen, but it's a reflection of how much I needed the therapy, I think, at the time. [laughter]
Jaap: I love that.
Geller: Yeah, I did that for a while and then we decided that we needed to - oh and then I went to work for the state hospital. Well it's like, Hmm. That was also an advocacy job in a way. It was reviewing records and going to treatment plan meetings. They had lost - remember there was a period of time where there were a bunch of deaths at the state hospital? Some of them [were] completely avoidable - suicides, completed suicides. It was like, ‘is anybody home?’ You know, it was the same kind of thing that had happened here. Was that the next job I did? Boy, that's why I should have brought the resume. [laughter] Yeah, I think it was the next job. Yeah.
[01:20:00]
Anyway, I did that for a couple years. And then we were at a place where we thought if - I was like turning 50 - it was like, oh, hmm. Well, my biological clock has run out. So, what are we gonna do here about kids? Butch and I started the process of being considered as adoptive parents and that's not an easy or short process. I remember this woman coming to our house and she wanted to see the whole house. And she was looking for safety issues and - this is an old house - and she is looking at all the weird things that we had done to make things work. She approved of our house finally, but I could tell - and had long discussions about us and it's like - wait a minute, you were married to each other once, and then you weren't and now you're married again, and now you wanna adopt a kid? You know, convince me that this is gonna be something that's gonna last a while. Convince me that I should even consider you as adoptive parents. I remember that table discussion - on the same dining room table that you are familiar with. She was sitting there putting it to us.
Jaap: It must have been incredibly frustrating.
Geller: Well, it was, but I mean, that was her job. She was doing a good job. She worked for Lutheran social services. I don't even know if they're still doing adoption home visits or not. My options were not great because I was in my fifties. We were interested in doing an international adoption well, in part, because we’d both traveled internationally, but also because I was too old - Butch was not too old - he's considerably younger than I am. But I was too old to be considered for an adoption in the United States. Yeah, because of my age. So we started to look at countries and their age limits, you know, it's like, hmm.
Jaap: When you’re 50?
Geller: So it's like, well, I guess it's China or nothing, which was kind of cool because Butch’s mom had been born in China. She was a missionary kid, a missionary child. She spoke very fluent - a language called Hakka. She learned Mandarin later. But we had that Chinese connection. It was like, ‘oh well, let's see what this is worth.’ So, we went through that process. The lady - I wish I could remember her name. I can see her face. [laughs] I can see her putting those questions to us. But we got approved and we looked at lots of agencies. There was one agency out of Littleton, Colorado that still exists called Chinese Children Adoption International. They do international adoptions now, not just Chinese adoptions, which aren't that common anymore. But they do adoptions from all over the world now.
And you know, a big process for them - interviews, you know, training. And then months later you get this - it was letters. It wasn't email, you know, in the mail with a picture of this little twerp. [laughs] I'm thinking, based on my child psychiatric knowledge, I'm thinking, ‘oh man, she's three and a half. What's happened to her in those three and a half years? What kind of trauma?’ Well, we asked lots of questions. I don't think we - who knows whether we got accurate information or not. We were told that she lived with her parents until she was seven months, that something happened. She was taken to the orphanage. She was then foster cared until she was about two and a half maybe. And then she came back to the orphanage where she was when we got to know of her. So I'm thinking, ‘oh man, this could be a nightmare.’ I was real concerned about that. We tried to get questions answered about stability. Well, one thing a lot of cultures do better than we do in the United States is they tend to value their kids and take care of them. I mean, that's kind of a giant overstatement, but we do a better job in many ways - or they do better job. And she had been cared for well by the adults in her life. It was very clear when we met her that, I mean, she was scared. We were scared. She cried and really flipped out, especially when I had to leave - once we met her - when I had to leave to go sign some papers and I left her with Butch, she completely disintegrated. But as long as we were there, she seemingly made the transition very easily.
And I'm bringing her to Butte where, you know, there's a Chinese history, but - which we made sure that she knew about - when she was here, we participated in all the parades. She has her photograph there at the Mai Wah with the dragon. She's a good kid.
Jaap: Was it a hard transition for you too? Does it take a while or is it an immediate bond? How does that - how did you guys -
Geller: You know, she and I bonded pretty quickly, I think, although she was afraid to go to sleep at night, so I would lay down with her until she got to sleep. And we learned some Mandarin. She had learned Mandarin once she went to school. She'd been in preschool and kindergarten. And we had Chinese friends here and - at that time - it's sad, but I have a very small Mandarin vocabulary now - but I did have one that was probably a hundred words. You know, do you need to go to the bathroom? Or just one word for bathroom or toileting. Goodbye. Hello, counting. I can remember going up the steps when we were still in China, counting the steps in Chinese, which she knew how to do already. I think that helped, that she had that. And we also tried to cook food that she liked.
She picked up on English pretty darn quickly. She liked to be with other kids, so she went to - and I stayed at home. I quit the job at the state hospital and stayed at home with her for a year, which was pretty weird for me to be an at-home person, but that's what I did. That helped. She was in - and we got her in daycare where she could be with other kids right away. And she picked up the language pretty quickly. Although she still really struggles with spoken language sometimes, but definitely with writing skills. You know, she's in grad school and I'm still editing her papers.
Jaap: What's her name?
Geller: Her name is Lew Yong. So she has my middle name. My name is Gretchen Lew Geller. After Ken and I got a divorce, I decided to keep my father's name. It's like, huh. Why should I change this? So my name was Gretchen Lew - I was named after a cousin of my mom's, whose name was Lewis, a male cousin, whose name was Lewis. And he spelled it L E W I S. So her name is Lew, which is her - her Chinese name that we knew was Zon Yong. And so we kept the Yong, added the Lew, and just made a new name for her. So her name is Lou Yong. But her Chinese name, as we learned anyway - who knows what it was originally - was Zon Yong. Yeah, we won the adoption lottery. I don't know how many times I can say that in my life, but - great kid.
[01:29:00]
And yeah, been downhill ever since. [laughs] I went back to work part-time as a victim witness advocate at the courthouse through the first couple years of her school, you know, when she was in kindergarten and then first and second grade. I don't remember when I went back to working full time. But I went back to a different iteration of child psych stuff for a while. And then ultimately I got a job at Montana Tech teaching - I started a medical assistant program there about 13 years ago, something like that. I can't remember. Yeah, lots of different jobs. Yeah, what a rich life, you know, I mean - the connection that Butch and I have with the radio station KBMF brought Africa to us again. And then when Lew Yong went to the Peace Corps, she was in Senegal. So Butch and I traveled to Senegal to visit her. Then we traveled to Ghana to see the schools where I taught there. That was a trip of a lifetime, what an opportunity. But I’ve got - I'm sponsoring students in South Africa that are in college now, in Nongoma - from the same place that the radio connection was made. And I'm going there! I mean, they're starting to graduate. Clark needs to come with me. Somebody needs to come with me that knows how to speak Zulu, because I sure don't.
I remember the greetings and that's about as good as it gets. So, I've got - one of the Zulu men that was here is now finishing his bachelor's degree. So my target is his graduation - will be the reason - and that's a couple years away so we can save money. Right? Yeah.
Jaap: Get your piggy bank going.
Geller: Yeah. He's gonna need a big one. But you know, my dad taught me to give back and boy, I didn't know how good that feels until - clearly we have more money than we need. You learn about what you need when you live in a culture where people don't even have what they need, and you're lucky enough to have what you need and enough to share. I’m sure I wouldn't have that same perspective if I hadn't lived in that household, if I hadn't had the experience in Sierra Leone, the experience in Ghana, the experience in Pennsylvania working with public assistance people. Yeah, so I'm one fortunate old lady, you know, to have that experience - to still be able to walk and talk and make sense most of the time and have my life rich now.
I'm busy, you know - busy and grateful. And one thing about giving back is that what you receive in return is always - always it seems like about tenfold what it seems like you give. Yeah. It's just remarkable. Whether it's your time or your money, your wisdom…but man, that's a good space to be in. Yeah. Really good space. So, no complaints.
Jaap: Yeah. I'm sure Clark has some questions. I have one final question.
Grant: Feel free.
Jaap: Okay. So you mentioned Butte is the place you've now called home the longest. Why? Why Butte? So you get here. It's ugly and it doesn't sound like you were in love when you first got here. So I'm just curious: why Butte? What made you -
Geller: Well, I think we made it our home and I still must say - I'm still an outsider in Butte. You know, I've been here how many years? But I'm, I'll never be a Buttian and there's no way that that will compute.
Jaap: I'm not sure how many years that is that you have to penetrate.
Geller: I don't think there's any amount!
Jaap: I don't either.
Geller: I don't think I'll live that long. But I love the history. I love the acceptance, you know, of lots of different kinds of people, generally. Maybe you like something that you've that has been a big - that challenges you on a very [regular] basis. This whole historic preservation question continues. Oh my God. Help us! Get people's interest in revitalizing buildings. That's something that we've been able to do in retirement. Butch and I, and Mitzi Rossilion and Larry Smith - I don't know if he was on board right away, I can't remember There were five of us who started Butte Citizens for Preservation and Revitalization. That was important. We aren't very much a part of it anymore, except that we're doing the work. We don't go to meetings - we contribute money. But I'm so glad that we had - you know, that's an important thing. The battles are not won. [laughs] We’re still arm wrestling over what has value. It's very interesting. You know, I'm sitting here looking at that apartment complex across the way that's getting revitalized that's next to the - isn't that the one that's..
Jaap: The O'Rourke?
Geller: Yeah.
Jaap: Those are all sold now.
Geller: Yeah. That's really good. And that they were gonna tear that place down.
Jaap: Yeah, not that long ago.
Geller: Yeah. Not that long ago. And lots of other places that fortunately are - have not been torn down - but I'm not sure what… You know, sometimes the battle lines get blurred - it doesn't even make sense anymore.
[01:36:08]
It's more - it becomes more emotional than intellectual because it's far beyond reason. [laughs] Wait a minute, you have somebody with a bunch of money that wants to buy this building and preserve it, but we'll tear it down anyway - which is essentially what has happened with the Blue Range, you know. So when the building - what was that - the first time that I had to put my body on the line, I said I was gonna strap myself to the door. What's the name of that building now? It's where the Chinese restaurant is. It’s right across from the Finlen.
Grant: Oh, the Acoma.
Geller: Yeah, the Acoma was gonna come down and it was like, ‘uh, I don't think so.’ And we went through that place. I mean, I was upstairs. Well, a good example is the Carpenter's Union Hall - of what you can do in terms of restoration - it's miracle work. Well, it's also a passion. So there's something very fulfilling about seeing something that was neglected and not cared for - I mean, it's not much difference than adoption, is it, of a child? There are some relevancies, parallels, I guess, in those things. But bringing back something or making something usable again or useful again is - it's not a bad hobby.
Jaap: No, it's not.
Geller: [laughs] So yeah, that's probably why I love it. It's given us the possibility to do that. And we've made good friends here. Our friends don't tend to be people from Butte or even people from Montana. I know those people because I've worked with them, but they're not people I hang out with for the most part - or they're my students. So I think the first time that I ever went to a major thing that didn't have anything to do with - that was all Buttians - were probably weddings of my students. Or showers, baby showers for my students - that I was in a room full of people that, with the exception of the student and maybe their family, I didn't know anybody else there.
But that continues. I know my neighbors. But they don't know me very well. You know, I know their names. I take care of their property when they're gone. I feed their dog occasionally and buy treats for their kids and all of those kind of things. But they're not my close friends. But I have a ton of close friends here now. They just - a lot of those people are like family, including Clark. Talk about a blessing.
Yeah, I've got these young people in my life that keep me going. I mean, yeah. I learn all kinds of things from - about stuff that I wouldn't have a clue about from these people that are 50 years younger than I am. And that's something to be thankful for too. Yeah, that's it, huh?
Grant: No, I got a question or two. You have something at two, you said, right?
Geller: Uh, no I don't actually.
Grant: Oh, that was you who said that you have something at two?
Jaap: Yeah, but I’m fine.
Grant: Okay. Okay.
Geller: Oh, it’s 1:20. Okay.
Grant: Okay. Well I just wanna ask a couple things Gretchen. So when you guys started Butte CPR - did you think it would be like quick work - you'd get this town turned around and that'd be that?
Geller: No, I don't think so. It was pretty apparent very quickly that this was gonna be a long road. A long haul. So, and that's the other thing is - when you make a commitment like we have to this town, the long haul is both expected - but then you just get to celebrate the little achievements along the way: another house preserved, somebody else having an opportunity to get in their own house, you know. I was really happy when Habitat [for Humanity] happened here. That's something that I - also an organization that I give money to and I support. Yeah, people need a safe, clean, viable place to live! That's a no brainer. And clearly there are still a lot of people in Butte who don't have that.
Now, I don't know if they're gonna stay here, but I see homeless people walking the streets in my neighborhood all the time. And I know young people who are trying to buy a house right now who can't because house prices now are ridiculous. And they have the energy to work on something. They're interested in that, but making the down payment or coming up with a cash for loan - forget it. So yeah, that's - we've been able to do that, to help with that. So that's a good thing.
[01:41:52]
Grant: You know, you've been really engaged and informed for decades now on this matter of preservation in Butte, and there have been so many studies about how to revitalize the uptown.
Geller: Yeah.
Grant: From your observations, why is there so much vacancy still uptown, in the business district?
Geller: You know, I'm guessing that [pause] - I don't know, it's probably a bias that I have…that Buttians are keeping that from happening.
Grant: What do you mean? How is that?
Geller: Uptown and old buildings have some kind of a bad reputation. I don't know. ‘They're old, they're ugly. It's about the past, not the future. It's all happening on the flats.’ [coughs] Now, not all Butte people are like that, clearly. There are people from Butte that believe in the Archives for instance, and they understand how important the history is to a place. The history doesn't go away if you tear the buildings down. It just makes it less rich.
Jaap: Yeah. I think for a long time, I don't know - like the narrative has been, ‘if we got rid of that, there'd be progress.’
Geller: Ugly buildings.
Jaap: There’s always going to progress, but they forget to progress. They tear it down then they forget to, you know, yeah.
Geller: It's hard. Making changes is hard and I - I don’t know - I’m 75, so I'm not gonna see major change maybe. I hope the next 10 years is good. Next 20 years. I hope I live another 25 years. If I do, I'd be happy. I'd be happy to have the sense to see positive change, but it happens in little baby steps and I have to celebrate the baby steps. I'll be going to this Dust to Dazzle on the weekend, and one of the houses that is on the tour is in my neighborhood - is right next door almost. That house was full of tweakers. I picked up syringes in the alley and I had one cop get really angry at me because I went in the building myself to get these guys out before I called them, before I called the cops. He said, ‘you could get hurt.’ You know, I just - I just wanted to hurt ‘em. Anyway. I mean, if they were tweaked out, how much could they hurt me? Probably not much. Who knows. I don't know - but that place has been completely restored, or is in the process. It's a gorgeous house - never should have - somebody should never consider tearing it down. And it adds to the street, to the neighborhood.
On some level, I hope in the future that there are a lot of people that live in Butte and call it their home that are proud of that, that heritage of preservation. There are a lot of other communities that have somehow gotten to that place. [coughs] We don't have as much money here. We've got foreign money, so to speak, you know, out of state money - that has invested in the preservation process. You can't preserve and then make it so expensive that somebody from Butte can't live there. That's nonsense. I mean, that doesn't compute. Then it becomes they versus them again. You know, ‘those darn outta staters.’ But you know, my husband and I, we've got a couple of properties now - all of them are historic properties that people are living in. That's a good feeling. And those young people, most of them young people, living in those places - I'm hoping they're appreciative of - and some of them are, they really get it. ‘Oh, this is cool to live on this street with these old houses and be a part of this.’ Who knows - all you can do is let 'em live there for a while and understand what you can do and maybe pass some of that along to them. They may take that somewhere else.
[01:46:25]
So it’s - Butte's been good to us. The first property that we bought, we bought because we thought we needed to help pay for this kid's education. As it turned out, she was a heck of a swimmer and she paid for her own education in the swimming pool at Purdue. She swam for them. And we didn't - I think we paid for one semester of her education and she's done the same in grad school, not by swimming, but by having a good resume and good grades. But that's what prompted us, along with the fact that - oh his picture is in the Mother Lode. He's no longer alive. Bob Poore, maybe, is his name. He was hell bent on tearing these properties down in the 300 block of West Broadway to make - it was gonna be a parking lot for the Mother Lode. Well, yeah, we fixed that. That was the impetus. I mean, and that place was a wreck. That place was a total wreck.
And then we bought one next to it, which was not so much a wreck - much nicer place actually right next to the Anglican church there. And, you know, people from out of town, mostly - they are reading these historic plaques that are on the houses and on the gates, the fences of these places. And they seem to appreciate that it's there. They're walking in our neighborhood all the time. Maybe it's because they're staying at the Finlen. I don't know. Or at that big B&B there on Excel. But there are people who appreciate the historic buildings and I wish more of them were from Butte.[laughs] And I certainly wish that our county government had different leadership at this point regarding what's possible with old buildings - but we just keep doing the work, you know? Uh, we're doing it again. We've got another place in Walkerville that we're working on now. Clark's living in a place that we worked on together. That was by far the worst shape of any that we tackled ever. It's like, were we crazy? Uh, maybe.
Grant: Yes. [laughter]
Geller: But the worse - the place - it's almost like watching a kid's recovery, you know. It's a different kind of recovery, but the amount of the craziness that was first somehow makes the celebration bigger if it was just wacko to begin with, you know? It's like, ‘are you kidding?’ We were really crazy to take this on, but now look at what we have. It's like, wow, that's a big celebration. So that's not unlike celebrating a kid's - anybody's recovery, you know? Yeah. Look at what was once, but look what's possible. And man, that's about as good as it gets. So there's a lot of - there's a lot of psych nursing in this. I'm realizing there's - I still have a nursing license. I haven't worked as a psych nurse for many moons. My last years in nursing were teaching. And then, uh, this last semester at Tech, I managed their COVID RX website and just facilitated communication between people mostly. I worked at home, but gave back to that community that I like and did something related to COVID. So yeah, who knows what the next challenge is gonna be? I don't know. You got any good jobs, good ideas for jobs for old ladies?
Grant: Don't look at me for job ideas. [laughter]
Jaap: Touchy.
Grant: All I have is painting. [laughter] I mean, I feel like we could talk about preservation or any of these subjects - I wanted to ask about the Peace Corps. I wanted to ask about starting a co-op. You know, there's so much that more we could talk about, but in limited time, I want to ask more about your dad, you know, just because - I know there's like the Geller Center, right?
Geller: Yeah. There is.
Grant: That’s named after him and he left a legacy. But what about his ministry? I was just curious about his approach to religion. How do you describe - how did he use the text of the Bible? And what was he like as a minister?
[01:51:23]
Geller: You know, I think his - he probably had some words to describe it. I'm sure he was asked this question many times, but it was about putting your belief into action. So going to church was not what it was about, at all. It was about sharing. It was about helping people, and he did that throughout his life and in his work. And I'm gonna start coughing again.
Grant: Okay. Take your time.
Geller: [coughs] The ministry at the Geller Center was total outreach in that community in Fort Collins. There was a large, growing Hispanic population and they lived in a part of town that was - just no sewers. I mean, it was like, are you kidding me? Well, my dad is like, let's put this to work, you know? So he made a big difference in that part of town. I mean, it's not the same place anymore. But he believed in putting his spiritual beliefs into action, and it was about having a social conscience. It was about giving back. So groups of college students would get together and do repairs, long before the first Habitat houses came to Fort Collins. He was right there at the beginning of it. Same way with a food co-op in Fort Collins, and a food pantry. In fact, I don't know if you've seen that book - his autobiography - or not. But in the back of the book are pages and pages and pages of things that he got started in Fort Collins. I mean - pages. Many of which continue.
And the ones that I can think of that I know continue because I still contribute money to them are the food bank and the Geller Center. So his work continues through that. They don't have a physical presence now because the building that they used was purchased. They sold the building.
But the other thing is - war is not the answer. I'm definitely a peace advocate. I need to learn some things about tolerance when it comes to our current political situation. I think he would be tearing his hair out, although somehow he managed through that whole Vietnam thing. He was a conscientious objector. He worked at the state mental hospital in Nebraska, did his service there for two years. He had a degree in counseling as well as - he had a master's degree in counseling as well as his divinity degree. But I think his - well I’m sure he would agree that - have you read that prayer that is carved out on the, that we sometimes keep on the piano? Have you seen that? That kind of says it all. But it's about using what you have to give back, you know, and not really fearing to put it out there, what you believe to know, your truth anyway.
I've told you before that he was threatened during the Vietnam war, physically threatened by people that we now call right wingers, John Bircher's. Something that was sent to him in the mail that showed a - had a gun site superimposed over his image - that he received in the mail from the John Birch Society, just stuff like that.
He didn't back down, you know, a little short dude, really. I mean, I'm taller than he was when he died because he was so stooped over. You know, maybe five-six total, I mean even on a good day. He was a track star. Yeah. And he did mostly cross country. But yeah, in college he ran track, but he was just a little twerp, you know, he was little. Yeah. My mom was a short person too. I've got more height with my brothers. But yeah, I think why he was credible is that he - at least his public life was - he lived what he believed. I didn't see that always translated at home…and I don't really wanna go there, but what he espoused was what you saw him doing personally.
And he tithed. I don't know if you know what tithe is, but even when he didn't have much money, you know, 10% of it was given back, one way or the other. And he would do things like - so he would call my mom and say, ‘I'm coming home for lunch, but I've got a few people with me.’ So we would never know, often, never know who was coming for lunch or supper.
Because somebody had strolled into the center, and didn't have anything. And my - he stopped at the place of asking them to spend the night. I think my mother would've probably moved out at that point, but we were feeding people that we didn't know on a regular basis at our house, or she was, and I was the prep cook, you know?
[01:57:55]
So you live with that example for a while and it's bound to catch on.
Grant: That's true.
Geller: Or I guess there's some other people that would have the reverse response to that. And it’s interesting because my brothers have had a much different response to that. Yeah. I have one brother that's got so much money he doesn't know what to do with it. I have another brother that's dead because he became an alcoholic. And another brother who - he hasn't figured it out yet, you know? And he's - I don't know. He's a good guy. A composer and smart as heck - has however many master's degrees. He ran an affordable housing organization in Western Massachusetts for a long time. He's not doing that now. I think he'd like to retire and fish is what I think. [laughs] But anyway.
So I feel lucky. Part of it's luck, part of it's choices you make, but part of the choices you make are based on your experience. So yeah. Made some really bad choices. Fortunately, they didn't cost me my life or [laughs] - but I made a lot of good choices and now I get to enjoy.
Grant: Well maybe to conclude Gretchen - I think the theme running throughout your life story is this notion of giving back.
Geller: Yeah.
Grant: And you said earlier that you get 10 times in return what you give. I was just - maybe to conclude, could you elaborate a bit more on that concept?
Geller: Well, I think a lot of the giving has been to younger people in one way or the other, either in how we made a home for Lew Yong - I mean, God, how do you put a price on that? Adoption is not, monetarily, is not a cheap engagement. I mean, there's the process of paying for all the stuff, but then there's the trip to China. It's like, somehow we managed all that. But the payback, are you kidding? That's a good example.
When you're a parent, I mean, I pretty much knew how to parent. I had parented my brothers because my mom got sick when I was young. And so I had parented my brothers and then found these jobs where I was parenting or caretaking. I needed to learn later how to caretake myself, because if you're gonna be a decent, healthy caretaker, you need to think about numero uno some of the time. That's probably when I first found my way to counseling was figuring out how to take care of myself.
Working with kids that have been, whose lives have been disrupted horribly - is kind of a reflection of some of the things that happened in my own life, you know. But very healing too.
[02:01:27]
So there’s something I was thinking about - hmm. Boy, this is a really interesting experience because - just my brain is going about six times faster than my words. And then I get to the next stop and forget what it was I was wanting to say. But yeah, the reward is somehow - maybe it has to do with investment. You know, maybe it all comes down to my dad's degree in economics. [laughs] I don't know. That's pretty crass to think about in those terms, but it's just a different kind of investment. It's an emotional investment, and you know, giving away the money - that's a piece of cake. But I don't give money if I'm not emotionally invested somehow.
And then the payback is huge. Yeah. Well, and you invest emotionally too, don't you show care for other people and bring them into your life. So yeah, I'm sure my dad was a big influence on that. And when I think about my brothers, maybe me because I had more of the influence because I sort of got it and got out, you know. And I never lived at home again except on very short, brief stints after I left for college the first time. Yeah. Even when I could have/should have financially - but I never did it. Yeah, grateful.
And some of it's luck, just bold faced luck, you know, who you run into. I mean, think about this whole craziness with the Zulus. I mean, how did that happen? That's just like - but what a blessing. I mean, that's a religious word for you, but for my life, I mean, I'm in contact with Mokai every day. He's like one of my kids, but he's just a long, long ways away. But, thank God for Facebook messenger. That's all I can say. And that's why we're gonna go to his graduation, bud. [laughs]
Grant: I look forward to it. Yeah.
Geller: Did I answer your question?
Grant: I think so. Yeah.
Geller: Okay. Well, yeah, this is a great opportunity. Thank you very much.
Grant: Thanks for doing this Gretchen.
Geller: Yeah. Yeah.
Grant: Did you have anything else Aubrey?
Jaap: No, thank you. Yeah, that was wonderful. Yeah.
Geller: Good.
Grant: I appreciate you sharing all that Gretchen.
Geller: Yeah. You're welcome. Yeah, what a treat.
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