Whatever Happened To...

To transition from teaching to retirement, it seems all it took for James Geyer ’53 was to shift gears. The teaching life, filled with graduate students and outreach projects was replaced with travel, outdoor pursuits, reading, and volunteer work.

Over the years, Jim and his wife Phyllis ’52-’77M have traveled extensively. They frequent Australia, New Zealand, and Europe. A favorite trip, to Russia a few years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, included a tour of Eastern Europe that Jim found fascinating for its look at failed communism.

Last year their trip to visit Incan ruins included sailing around Cape Horn and stopping in Rio de Janeiro. There, Jim was struck by “…the dichotomy of rich and poor. I also learned public education ends at 4th grade. To continue, parents must pay, on average, two and a half times their annual salary. Somehow they’re doing it. I think this attests to how much people value education.”

On the other hand, there is no place like home. Born and raised in Shippensburg, Jim lives in nearby Fayetteville. “I can’t imagine living anywhere else. I’ve been blessed to live in such a great community.”

At home, Jim enjoys playing golf. “It’s supposed to make me relax, but somehow I always seem to get aggravated,” he laughed. “Yet I always go out for another round.”

Woodworking, hunting, and fishing also find time in Jim’s schedule as does reading. He frequently reads about the Civil War and is fascinated by SU’s scholarly journal Proteus: A Journal of Ideas. For pleasure he is likely to read John Grisham or Tom Clancy.

His latest volunteer pursuit is as a member of Helping Hands with Hearts (HHH), a Penn National organization that helps people who cannot afford to repair or maintain their homes.

Yet, the former director of reading admits, “I miss teaching.”

He liked working with grad students, both secondary and elementary school teachers, valuing their maturity, passion, real concern for learning, and their commitment to developing reading diagnosis and remediation

One advantage his students had was the on-campus laboratory school. “It’s great my students were able not only to listen to my lectures but also to apply those concepts in the classroom.”

During his tenure at Ship, Jim was involved with a program at the Scotland School for Veterans’ Children that encouraged students there to pursue a college education. He was also part of a program to help people of all ages obtain their GED. “I loved doing this. I remember helping one woman who was 75. The best part was working with people – mainly older – who were driven to succeed.”

Gearing into retirement certainly hasn’t been a downshift for Jim.

Daniel Gomes ’08, an intern for the magazine, contributed to this article.