Geraldine Messenger

All About Geri

Reflecting on Geri’s life and passions was a fun exercise for the Messenger family. Even in the midst of sadness, it is important to remember and reflect about the lives of our loved ones, shared experiences, shared joy, and shared sadness. Even though we are celebrating her life privately, with this small service as her joyful send off, we want to make sure she knows that we loved her dearly and will miss her every day. In this small way we want to honor her in the way she would have liked. We have tried to do that for Geri here.

Summing up a life well lived can be daunting, but when thinking about how Geri lived, it is easily reflected in what she loved doing and her passions. Of course, she loved her family. She was a spirited daughter to Ken and Genevieve, sister to Harry and Kenny Jr., wife to Bill and mother to David and Erika. Staying connected to extended family was hard for both Bill and Geri – with Bill’s family in England and Geri’s family in New York. But even so, Bill and Geri worked as a team, a dynamic duo throughout their marriage and made family their first priority, no matter what. That dedication to family, and love for one another, created an unbreakable bond that lasted for over 50 years. Up to the very end, even though they were physically separated, Bill and Geri were together always.

For Geri, education is another of her passions and getting an education was a constant goal. Her first accomplishment - graduating high school from the Academy of Holy Names in Albany New York. Although she wanted to attend college at Exeter University in New Hampshire, she ended up meeting and marrying a handsome British charmer named Bill, and starting a family. When she had the chance to try for college again, it was at the University of Colorado at Boulder. What a fun experience for her! She truly enjoyed college life in the midst of raising a family. She made friends quickly, attended the Journalism school and wrote articles for the Daily Camera, was able to get tickets to football games for the whole family, learned French, and had a plethora of college aged baby sitters on hand when David and Erika went to campus with her. She was able to get her Bachelor’s degree – a major milestone. Keep in mind, that while she was doing all of this, and taking care of the kids and Bill, Bill was also getting his education, both his Bachelors and Masters degrees. So of course, not to be outdone, Geri also earned her Masters from the University of Portsmouth in the United Kingdom when Bill was relocated there for work.

Geri loved all things British (starting with Bill, he was indeed a very good start). She was an Anglophile through and through. While Bill was transferred to England for work, and with their shared love of travel, Bill and Geri went on all sorts of adventures when they lived there over a three-year period. She found and took Bill to places that he never new existed. Bill used to say that he saw more of his home country in that time period with Geri than he had when he was growing up. Geri was also able to maneuver quite nicely on her own using the train system and was able to have some of her own adventures. During one poignant week in August, Bill and Geri experienced the death of Princess Diana with the entire country, and Geri signed numerous condolence books for the late princess.

While they were in England for Bill’s work, in the most amazing way, she was able to connect her love for travel and her love for education by attending the Ballymaloe cooking school in Ireland. She and Bill had a fun weekend together in Ireland and she stayed on for a few extra days to attend the cooking school. When they left England and moved back to Illinois, she took her love for education and cooking to another level. She wanted to get better at cooking so in those later years, and only a few years before she was diagnosed with Parkinson’s, she set her sights on getting a degree in culinary arts. Mission accomplished! She attended Blackhawk Tech in Illinois where she did of course graduate with an associate degree.


Bill and Geri shared many adventures together on the high seas, and cruising tropical locations was definitely on Geri’s list of passions. Their first cruise together was about five years after they were married - in a prewar, not exactly glamourous, ship. The cabins were small and the double bed was really just single bunk beds on top of each other. For them, it didn’t matter. The food was great and they had each other. And there were many other opportunities to take cruises after Bill retired. One memorable cruise was an amazing trans-Atlantic journey on the QE2. They were able to include three weeks in England in between the east and west journeys, spending time with Bill’s extended family. Bill used to say that in their travels, Geri never met a souvenir shop she didn’t like… Oh the things she would buy… Tea towels and tea cups galore! But even now, the memories of those adventures are vivid thanks to all the souvenirs that remain even after she has passed.

And then there was the quilting… Geri had a talent for it. She collected fat quarters of fabric that she just knew might work for some future vision of a quilt. The fabric was everywhere, in every nook and cranny around the house! She made so many quilts and loved putting each and every one of them together. She made quilts as bags, quilts as blankets, quilts as bedcovers and quilts as wall hangings. She loved going into quilting shops, taking in the smell of the fabrics, and talking with the shop owners about their shared love for quilts. Even now, there are so many of Geri’s quilts and fat quarters that remain, a reminder of the nimble yet sharp skills that she tried to maintain even after the Parkinson’s diagnosis.

Throughout it all, even during the tough bits, they were an inseparable team. When the Parkinson’s became too much to handle for just the two of them, Bill made the tough but necessary decision that they needed to move to Wesley Willows. Life was taking a different turn than either one of them wanted or anticipated, but Bill knew what the future held. Geri was never happy about the decision, and wasn’t shy about saying that she wasn’t happy about it. But really, it was the Parkinson’s that she wasn’t happy about, and who could blame her. They downsized, sifted through their shared history and economized. Even the souvenirs were whittled down a bit, but some made the journey to their new home. The sewing machine and fabric also made the journey with the hope that perhaps Geri would be able to spend some time working on another quilt. In all regards she made the best of it. And she may not have even realized it, but she made such a positive impact on her fellow Wesley Willows residents. She relished in sharing with others the knowledge that she had gained over the years, and she loved learning about the lives and histories of her neighbors, that later, became dear friends.

Looking back, for Bill, life was moving forward following work. For Geri, life was moving forward being with Bill while she raised the family and chased her dreams. For both of them, it was a life of shared love, in good times and in bad, in sickness and in health.