Meg Geffken, bringing history to life

Today's guest is Meg Geffken, a retired educator who is still teaching, just in a slightly different way. Meg's family history goes back in the Benton area for a few generations. Her love of history has created a post-career career in well researched performances of women from local and American history. Today, you will learn about Meg and a bit about two of those women. Enjoy.

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:05

Welcome to local, the podcast in which we talk to people who are well local. Today I'm going to be talking to Meg Gifkin, who's a retired teacher from the Benton and Northwest School Districts as well as Penn College. Now, while she's retired, Meg is still teaching. She now researches and performs women from history, both local and farther abroad. In our interview today, you'll learn both about Megan's life, but also about the life of Abigail Geisinger, and a touch about Betsy Ross. Did you know Betsy Ross had been read out of the Quaker community not once, but twice? Seems so. And I actually hope to have Abigail visit the podcast for her own interview someday. Today you just get a teaser of what that might be. Anyway, here's Meg. Enjoy. Well, Meg, it's nice to talk to you.

SPEAKER_00 0:58

It's good to be here.

SPEAKER_01 0:59

Now, I've known you since we first got to Bloomsburg from the early days of BTE because you were at that time teaching in Benton and we had a common university. We both went to Northwestern. And so when BTE began, I remember you as being right there in the support group in the community. Was it Jamie who was a no-neck monster in Cat on a hot tin roof?

SPEAKER_00 1:22

Yes, Jamie and Sarah were no-neck monsters. And uh Shannon was the baby in a doll's house.

SPEAKER_01 1:31

Oh, was she?

SPEAKER_00 1:32

And then the children went on to uh to be in Christmas Carol.

SPEAKER_01 1:37

Yes, right, as any child in this area has to do. First of all, let's start with just you and where you grew up, how you grew up, when you grew up.

SPEAKER_00 1:48

Well, I grew up in a very small town in Delaware County. Initially, our town was Clifton Heights, and when I was nine, we moved to Springfield. I went to private school as a little girl, and then went to Misricordia University, and from Misercordia I went to Northwestern. But my connection to this area is that my grandparents were from the village of Central. And after the demise of Jemison City, when my dad was only five years old, they moved to Berwick but always kept a home in the village of Central. And so that was their dream they would retire to the village of Central. They were able to do that, but unfortunately, my grandfather passed away after only a year. So my grandmother, who lived to be 97 and was really a matriarch, we always had our vacations at my grandmother's in Central.

SPEAKER_01 2:55

Now, did your grandfather work in the timber industry, the tanning industry?

SPEAKER_00 3:00

Initially he did. And then he worked for ACNF. Oh, okay.

SPEAKER_01 3:04

So the railway.

SPEAKER_00 3:06

That was, yes.

SPEAKER_01 3:07

So this is a place you visited, and that's why you ended up in Missouricordia. And then after Northwestern, were you back in New Jersey, Philly?

SPEAKER_00 3:18

No, I went to I taught f at Mount Aloysius Junior College for a year.

SPEAKER_01 3:25

In central Pennsylvania. Yes, in central Pennsylvania. A million and a half years ago.

SPEAKER_00 3:30

Oh, wow.

SPEAKER_01 3:31

A million and a half, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 3:32

My goodness. Well, I was in the dark ages. And then I went to California and I settled in San Francisco. And I was teaching at the Convent of the Sacred Heart and Star of the Sea. And they had wonderful addresses. 2222 Broadway was the Convent of the Sacred Heart. And that's where I met my husband, who was a Savannian. And then we decided when we were starting a family that we would go back to his home, Savannah, Georgia. And we lived in Georgia, and three of our children were born in Georgia. Oh really?

SPEAKER_01 4:12

Savannah's beautiful. I love Savannah.

SPEAKER_00 4:15

Yes. It is.

SPEAKER_01 4:18

And then what brought you here?

SPEAKER_00 4:20

I had been teaching part-time at what is now Armstrong State, and I think it has become a university. But we came north and settled initially near my parents in Springfield, Delaware County, and then started to spend the summer here, and then we decided that we would stay here.

SPEAKER_01 4:44

Oh, that's nice.

SPEAKER_00 4:45

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 4:45

Then you had three children?

SPEAKER_00 4:47

Yes. No, actually, when we moved to Central, we had five. Both my two youngest children, James and Shannon, were born here. So they are the true locals.

SPEAKER_01 5:00

Uh-huh. And Jamie's now the superintendent of Benton Schools, right? Yes.

SPEAKER_00 5:05

Yes. Wonderful. Yes. He did not have a successful acting career. Well, he was just too chubby for Tiny Tim.

SPEAKER_01 5:15

But great for a no-neck monster. You need those roles of fat, don't you? So then tell me about your teaching career here.

SPEAKER_00 5:21

Well, I started something in Benton and then became a full-time teacher in Benton, where I taught for 10 years. And then I transferred to Northwest, Northwestern, uh, Northwest School District, and I was there until after my husband died, and then I just stayed at the college at Penn College in Williamsport.

SPEAKER_01 5:45

Mm-hmm. Did you work with Donna Gubick in the U.S.?

SPEAKER_00 5:49

Donna was wonderful.

SPEAKER_01 5:50

Still is wonderful. She is.

SPEAKER_00 5:52

She is, yes.

SPEAKER_01 5:54

Yeah, Donna was our first to be T, the first like actual stage manager we had, where like knew how this thing was supposed to work. It was a revelation. She was great. And I loved her husband, Jonah. He was a great guy, too.

SPEAKER_00 6:06

Jonah was he was a wonderful teacher and a wonderful friend.

unknown 6:11

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 6:11

Was he football coach at Northwest? Is that what he said?

SPEAKER_00 6:15

No, he was football coach and coached at Wilkes and Wilversible. Okay. But he taught at Northwest.

SPEAKER_01 6:22

Oh, right. Okay.

SPEAKER_00 6:24

He was very, very good in sports. I mean, a number of sports that he had coached baseball also.

SPEAKER_01 6:33

That's funny because when we were doing Cat on a Hoption Roof, in which uh Jamie and Shannon were in were the monsters, we had a session with Jonah about, you know, I was break the quarterback and just I was on the tennis team. I don't take a hike or do anything like that. So he he was great as a coach for us to actually look less like, you know, thin-necked art students and more like football players. Just like Jack Roberts, who's passed away. Uh we used his gym to try to bulk up for those parts as well. That was it was very much fun. We had two coaches in the community. So, as you have moved through your teaching career, when did you retire and what have you done after retirement?

SPEAKER_00 7:20

I officially retired from Northwest in 2003. And then I went on and stayed with Penn College for a couple of years. And I enjoyed the college teaching. It was a respite. But there were so many other things that I wanted to do that I hadn't been able to do, like travel more extensively. So I was very fortunate. I have a cousin who retired at almost the same time. He was with the Attorney General's office, and so we did numerous trips to Europe and any exciting place we could find. Um and then I had been asked just to, you know, to do a presentation on a character. And I had done that, you know, when I was in college a few times, and I was really became very interested in researching different characters, but they were all historical. And then I found Mrs. Geisinger. And I just, when I'm researching a character, I go back to the old days at Northwestern, where to understand a character you use their letters, their autobiography, the biography, and then the historical context in which they're living. Well, Mrs. Geisinger was perfect as far as historical context because of the Danville connection. But there were very few letters, and only one, it's not a full biography, it's an essay, but it was written by Dr. Foss. And so that that really opened up a lot of potential for her character. I was extremely fortunate when I was trying to research the clothing, what she wore, that Kathy Gray, who makes costumes, and I'm sure she's retired by now, but she had a photo of Mrs. Geisinger, and from that photo she made the costume. And then I did Mrs. Geisinger at her home.

SPEAKER_01 9:38

Oh, did you?

SPEAKER_00 9:39

Yes, yeah. At numerous teas, and and then I thought, I can't just do one character, and then it started to expand.

SPEAKER_01 9:49

Tell us about Abigail Geisinger. What was she like?

SPEAKER_00 9:53

She was a very determined woman. She was very, very quiet. And and uh she had an an unusual, a difficult life. Her parents, her mother was a Quaker, and her mother died when Abigail was just a baby, literally. And so her Quaker uncle and aunt took her to Ohio and she lived with them until she was almost eight years old. And then her father wanted her back. She had an older sister, Mary, and her sister was about four and a half, five years older than Abigail. So when she came back to her, you know, her family in Danville, she married, she married her first cousin, and he was killed in, he actually was not killed in the war. He died of an illness, so she was never able to get a pension from the war. But one of the people who frequented, they had, they ran the hotel, it was always referred to as the white swan because of a painting over the door. So Mr. Geisinger, frequently, who was not from this area initially, and had traveled all over the world, was a frequent person who had dinner at the hotel and they had a dining area. And he initially wanted to help Mrs. Geisinger because her husband was involved with the war. Then later, when they received information that he had died to help with a pension, but he proposed to her and they married, and she was um she was almost 39. And then from then on uh he involved her in the business, and she was very self-conscious about the fact that she had such a limited education, but she was mathematically very, very smart, and she went to all the meetings that they had with the stockbrokers and um in the Wilkes-Barre area in Edwardsville, and so they became he her husband was just brilliant as far as knowing what to invest in.

SPEAKER_01 12:25

So he was an investor, he was not connected to the Danville Iron Age.

SPEAKER_00 12:29

Oh no, he worked in in Danville as the treasurer with the ironworks. And so he actually, you know, had a job in there. But before that, he had traveled all over the world, and his father was involved with the Philadelphia Naval Yard. And then I think the majority of their money was made simply because they invested in the coal mines, they invested in electricity and the gas when this was a newer industry. And so, no, I think it's just amazing that a woman who could not even vote would be able to build a hospital, and there were people that objected to it.

SPEAKER_01 13:16

To the hospital or the to the fact that she, a woman, was doing it.

SPEAKER_00 13:20

Actually, they felt that the hospital would become a liability. They didn't realize, you know, and she wrote to doctors that she knew in Philadelphia, who had been either someone who grew up in Danville and was now a doctor in a Philadelphia hospital, and she asked them to recommend to her, you know, young men that would be willing to start here. So Dr. Foss has this great family story that and uh they just they clicked.

SPEAKER_01 13:59

I was told by John Brady, who's since passed away from Danville, uh, that originally Abigail said this hospital is to be free for everyone.

SPEAKER_00 14:08

It was free. She had made the statement during the First World War when that was the breakout, that if anyone was, if they could bring a soldier to Danville, that they would be never pay a bill.

SPEAKER_01 14:26

Oh, and that was for the people in the military?

SPEAKER_00 14:28

That was the people in the military. That was specifically made there. And there were people who worked for her that Mrs. Geisinger would never allow them to have a bill, like the man who drove her car. She was very innovative in wanting to have an automobile, and she had gone to Europe, and I think that was because her husband had at one time, but she went to Europe and she felt that it had been much better in her mind and with him. But since he had passed away, that was uh that was really a difficult experience for. I loved the fact that she loved to go to Atlantic City and ride in the the pushchairs. Oh, really? That that was a thrill for her. But she got to the point in her life when she was building the hospital or you know, had the idea for a hospital where she knew she wanted to do something significant, and it was always to say the George M. Geisinger Hospital.

SPEAKER_01 15:42

Oh, really? Yes. How did it get to change to Geisinger? I mean to Abigail.

SPEAKER_00 15:48

It isn't. It should be George and on the original documents, that's what she wanted the name of the hospital to be. This was in his memory because and also people once she had the car, she was very generous and she said, if someone needs to go to the hospital, the closest one would be Bloomsburg. And but it got to the point where one of the quips from my portrayal is people in Danville do not become ill at convenient hours. They like to become ill. So she had been awakened several times, uh, you know, at 10 in the evening, and she had always told her driver, John Kelly, you you really can drive them. But he felt, this is your car, you have to be there.

SPEAKER_01 16:45

Oh. Well, that's wonderful, and that kicked you off into the other performances you do, the other people you present.

SPEAKER_00 16:54

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 16:55

Yes, wonderful. And I haven't mentioned this to the people who are listening, but you do a series of women uh from history, local and beyond our local area, and you embody them and perform them. So talk about those women.

SPEAKER_00 17:12

Well, sometimes when you get into the research, you find too much. So the programs on Eleanor Roosevelt are now divided into do you want Eleanor Roosevelt her early life? Uh do you want before, or the whole the war years with Franklin? Or do you want Eleanor when she, you know, at 60, she's leaving the White House saying, you know, there this is the end of the story. And actually, it was the beginning of the major part of her career where she was significantly recognized as herself.

unknown 17:54

Wow.

SPEAKER_00 17:55

And she had written my day because she wanted to establish a communication, you know, with the general public. So when she was leaving the White House, Ladies Home Journal said, No, people still want to know what you're doing. And she thought her career was over. Harry Truman contacted her about being our representative to the United Nations. And she said to him, but your wife is the first lady. And his comment was, but you are the first lady of the world. We need you. She did so much research to prepare for anything she did. That's wonderful. Who else do you do? Well, currently I'm doing a series for America 250. So it's Betsy Ross, Abigail Adams, and Martha Washington. All right. And one of my favorite characters is Amelia Earhart.

SPEAKER_01 18:57

Oh.

SPEAKER_00 18:58

And the reason I uh became interested in Amelia Earhart was one of my closest friends, her father was one of the whiz kids who at 15 went to Purdue, and Amelia Earhart was his teacher. And so I was just so amazed. And we were talking one day, and he knew about the characters we were visiting, and he said, Amelia Earhart was my teacher. Hello. Wow. So then, you know, I I wanted to research as much as I could. And I call them perception changers because every one of the characters that I've found, even Marilyn Monroe, who is the fluke of my characters, every one of those characters had some major difficulty in their life that they overcame. From Eleanor Roosevelt, you have to do the thing you fear, do one thing you're afraid of every day. And she had a horrible fear of water. When her parents were leaving for Europe, she was dropped and she actually went into the water, and someone saved her, of course. But she, you know, her uncle Teddy, as she's growing up, was a jump in the water, and you know, but she mastered that, you know.

SPEAKER_01 20:26

Wow, that's wonderful. Now, you your teaching career was English, am I correct? So the history was adjacent to that, or was that something you had always wanted to get to?

SPEAKER_00 20:38

Well, when I was graduating from college, there would not have been any jobs in history for women. History, yes, that was the men's, and they were the coaches. But I loved British British history. I I really I was not a fan of American history in college, but British history was, oh, I thought that was.

SPEAKER_01 21:04

So I knew all of Henry VIII's wives and their stories and we live in a small community in which there was a history that was built with individual families tied over generations to what happened in the community. And I arrived here in 77. You said you were here early 70s? Yes. So we were part of the influx from Philadelphia, from Chicago, Illinois, the eastern megalopolis that is constantly spreading out in this area. So community is a bit different now. History in this area has changed. How do you see history functioning in this local area now, if if that's a clear question?

SPEAKER_00 21:50

We have a program at St. Gabriel's that we're starting this year. It's called Second Sunday, and we are trying to uh Engage people in finding out more about their ancestors who are buried there and the diversity. In Sugarloaf Township, the names of Hess, Fritz, York's, LaBaul, Cole are prominent names. You know, uh people will say, Oh, I'm related to, but most of their descendants are not really living in this area anymore.

SPEAKER_01 22:30

When I first got here, I discovered the Northumberland Historical Society, and there's a whole series of books. And I just found them and I love them. They talked about Madame Montour and things that happened in Herndon and Down River and Maybur out in Northumberland. They were just fascinating stories, and I loved it. Just getting the richness and history of the community here.

SPEAKER_00 22:58

There's more history to be discovered. And people want to uh want to learn about it. And it's not just people who are natives or have a connection, it's people seeking a connection. Or wanting to be part of a community. You know, there's such an interest in the Fishing Creek Confederacy. So when we have a program uh and the Molly McGuire's, oh my goodness.

SPEAKER_01 23:29

And I learned they were hung right up there, right up what we used to be the middle school when I was here, when I first arrived here in the parking lot across there. Yeah, it's dance, isn't it, with history.

SPEAKER_00 23:40

Well, what are your next plans?

SPEAKER_01 23:41

Do you have a character you want to do or a place you want to go?

SPEAKER_00 23:45

Well, I do plan to visit my my son is coming from Alaska, he and his wife, but his children and grands are in Alaska, so I'm going up later this year to spend time with them. I have found so much kind of controversial information on Betsy Ross that I really want to explore her more. And I found her to be, you know, I never thought of Betsy Ross as being married three times. Oh being read out of the Quaker church twice. And but I really oh yeah.

SPEAKER_01 24:25

I didn't even know she was a Quaker.

SPEAKER_00 24:26

Yes, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 24:28

Why was she read out of the Quaker?

SPEAKER_00 24:30

She married outside her faith, and there it was a very strict Quaker community. Uh-huh. And then she then went back to the Quakers in a group that was less stringent with requirements. But she had that amazing education as a Quaker, where, you know, we think of her as making a flag, but she was an upholsterer. She really had a good sense of math. And the Quaker School at that time, she spent four hours every day reading, writing, and arithmetic, you know, and then four hours where they had to learn crafts particularly. Oh, right. Yeah.

unknown 25:13

Wow.

SPEAKER_01 25:14

Well, that's fascinating. Well, it's been really nice talking to you. Maybe someday Abigail can show up and we can have an a little talk. I would love to talk to Abigail.

SPEAKER_00 25:24

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 25:24

So we'll plan for that for the future.

SPEAKER_00 25:26

Yes, that would be great. Thank you. And she's quite controversial.

SPEAKER_01 25:30

Is she? All the better. Wonderful. Well, thanks, Igmegan. It's wonderful to talk to you.

SPEAKER_00 25:34

Oh, it's good talking to you, man.

SPEAKER_01 25:38

That's it for locals, where we talk to people who are most definitely local. Locals will take a two week summer break starting next week because even local people take vacations in other places. We'll be back in July with more conversations with people you know or whom you will know once you hear their interview. See you in July. Have a nice break yourself.