Guy Geller

By Lucius Lampton, Special to the Tylertown Times
Guy Charles Geller, 87, of the Progress community, died Sept. 14, 2024 at Beacham Memorial Hospital in Magnolia. A memorial service is planned at Silver Springs Baptist Church at 3020 Silver Drive near Progress on Sept. 28, 2024 at 1 p. m.
Guy was born Sept. 20, 1936, in Szentes, Hungary, the son of a Hungarian-born French father, Gerard Gyula Geller, and a French-born American mother, Erraudeaux Cahors Geller. The family moved to Paris in 1938 for his father to pursue his career as a writer of plays, biographies, and fiction. The invasion of Hitler’s armies into France would alter tragically his idyllic youth. His father, of Jewish descent, was arrested by the Nazis Oct. 13, 1942, which was also his father’s birthday. Guy never saw his father again and did not receive documentation about his father’s death in the Auschwitz gas chambers until October of 1996.
After his father’s arrest, Guy was protected and hidden by many people who aided his mother in keeping him away from the Gestapo. His period of hiding last three years, and he journeyed usually in concealment all over France from 1942-1946.
After extensive struggles, four years to the day of his father’s arrest in Paris, Guy and his mother arrived in the United States as American citizens. Guy perceived America as providing his family a great blessing in becoming his new home. Guy continued his education in America, and often cited Mortimer Adler’s Great Books as providing a necessary element of his education. In his eighth grade year, he was adopted by the Moore family, yet still traveled extensively over his summers and attended multiple high schools.
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He joined the U. S. Air Force and served in Europe, Asia, and America. He met and married in 1957 his wife Patsy Alford whose happy spirit provided his life a lifelong inspiration. After more than seven years of service, he moved his family from South Carolina to Slidell, Louisiana where he would hold executive positions with Boeing and Sears. He had a passion for sailing and soon after arriving in Slidell purchased a sailboat to take his family out on the Lake and Gulf. He was one of the founders of the Tammany Yacht Club and served as its first Commodore. His family began spending extensive visits with Patsy’s parents the Alfords at their nearby Progress home place.
He also began work in the 1990s on an important memoir entitled Journeys to Freedom, which relates his war time three-year concealment from the Gestapo by French supporters. His mother-in-law Wilda Alford was his proof-reader, and the book was published in 1998 to international acclaim. It remains one of the finer memoirs of the Holocaust period, as well as one of the finest memoirs ever published by a Mississippian. He was invited to speak around the United States on the book and was asked to give signings at the national Holocaust Museum in Washington, D. C.
His retirement was hardly a retirement. He and Patsy moved to her parents property in the Progress Community, where they remodeled what they called “The Shack.” They also purchased the historic Frith House on Myrtle Street in Magnolia. He became in early 1998 a Contributing Editor for the Magnolia Gazette, creating the popular column “Armchair Ponderings,” which won multiple state press awards over its 25 years of existence. He became Administrator at Beacham Memorial Hospital in Magnolia and led that institution for more than a decade. He also operated for a time on North Cherry Street in Magnolia an elegant frame shop he called “All in the Frame.” He was a guest multiple times on the nationally noted The Kirk Minihane Show, which came to Magnolia and filmed a broadcast from La Mariposa Café with him. He was the founder of Magnolia’s Mardi Gras Parade, which continues, and also brought a tented big-topped circus to Magnolia on multiple occasions through his local civic work on the local Chamber of Commerce.
After losing his beloved wife Patsy last year, he suffered with multiple medical problems but continued to write his popular column episodically and loved regular visits to his daughter’s deli The Coffee Caboose Roasters in Tylertown, as well as the Fernwood Country Club in Fernwood and La Mariposa in Magnolia. He was preceded in death by his spouse, Patsy Alford Geller; father, Gyula Geller and mother, Erraudeaux Cahors Geller. Survivors include his son, Rusty Geller (Helen) of Osyka; daughters, Patricia McCain (Reynolds) of Frisco, TX; and Therese Jones (Dennis) of Tylertown; nine grandchildren; nine great grandchildren.