Andrea Kier

Died: August 7, 2021 in Ontario, Canada at Andy's House Hospice, in her 75th year. Andrea was married to Kenneth Geller for 30 years.

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Submitted in 2001:

Greetings to my fellow classmates of long, long ago. I look forward to seeing everyone at the reunion and am thrilled to see so many people coming in from a distance.

So what have I been doing for the past 36 years? I am currently on the verge of a major life change with retirement or unemployment, have not decided which, on the very near horizon (end of April, 2001).

I am currently living in Toronto, happily married (for 10 years) to husband #2, Ken Geller, and am the proud mother of two, almost grown (do they ever become independent?) step-children, ages 25 and 20. I gave birth to Julie when she was 17 – that is when she decided to come live with us. It was very painful giving birth to someone that old when I was 46, but it has also been very rewarding to watch her grow into a successful and talented web-site designer. Michael lives with his “other” family in British Columbia and is still in school, studying to be a chef (definitely does not take after me in that regard).

Looking back to 1965, in the fall I headed off to Goucher College in Baltimore, discovered politics, and majored in political science, with a minor in French, with the latter allowing me to spend my junior year abroad in Paris and Geneva in 1967/68. I had a hard time with the Viet-Nam war and the assassinations of Martin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy, followed by the election of Richard Nixon (sorry if I offend any Republicans), so I decided it was time for a change in venue, quit Goucher at the beginning of my senior year, headed home, worked for 6 months to buy a plane ticket and have some spending money, and headed to Israel (had a very good friend there whom I met while at Goucher, who later became husband #1). I did odds and sods in Israel and stayed 2.5 years, 2 years and 3 months longer than planned. My husband and I ended up working for Canadians in Israel, liked them a lot, so the logical next home was Canada’s big city – Toronto - after some traveling in Africa and Europe. We liked being ex-pats so decided to stay away from the US, except to visit.

Shortly after coming to Canada in 1972, I went back to school and finally (as my mother would say) completed my BA at the University of Toronto, did some social service work, had a business with husband #1, then started working for a very small marketing research company. I have been with this company for 22 years, and they (with my help, of course!) have become one of Canada’s leading public opinion and social survey research companies. But on my 54^th birthday, after much soul searching, I decided to pack it in and enjoy life a bit more. I am looking forward to goofing off around the city and spending the summer (brief as it is around here) at our cottage, a few hours north of Toronto. After that, who knows? Maybe more of the same. There are lots of good books I have not read, courses of interest I have not taken and a world to discover, all at my leisure, all the things that I have not had time to do, as over the years, work took more and more of my time.

I still enjoy sports and do some skiing in the winter, both downhill and cross country, and swimming, canoeing and kayaking (my newest toy) in the summer. I like to travel, and never seem to do as much as I want. Maybe now I will have time to do more of these leisure activities.