Jon Mark Beilue: Grabbing on to her shiny star

Life of learning, giving leads to Geneva Schaeffer Education Building

Top photo: Stanley Schaeffer announces a $2.5 million gift to West Texas A&M University on Feb. 21 in memory of his late wife, Geneva (seen in portrait). Dyke Rogers, co-chair of the One West campaign leadership committee, looks on at left.

Bruce Gressett was squeezing out a living as a farmer in Wheeler County around 1940. The Depression and the Dust Bowl were in the recent past, but what was not was the education of his and wife Lillian’s young children.

Canyon felt like the place to be. West Texas State Teachers College made the town the epicenter of education in the Texas Panhandle. Gressett’s plans were to get to Canyon and figure out what to do after that.

“All of our families were from around the Wheeler area, and they thought Mother and Daddy were crazy,” said daughter Joan Meason, “but their dream, first of all, was to see us all finish high school and, second, to go to college.”

It didn’t seem crazy at all to Gressett. He only had a fourth-grade education, but he may have been the most well-read man in Wheeler County. He always had a book with him when he wasn’t farming. At nights, he’d often gather the four girls around on the couch and read works of literature to them.

When the Gressetts and four daughters — two sons would come later — pulled into Canyon that first day, they happened by the college. When Gressett inquired as to what one particular building this was, he was told part of it was a demonstration school, a school for first through seventh grade that was an option to Canyon elementary school. Different subjects were taught by WT students who were education majors.

“That’s all Daddy needed to hear,” Joan said. “He marched us all in and enrolled us. That sounds like a crazy story, but that’s what happened.”

The Gressett sisters thought they had gone to grade-school heaven, especially Geneva, the oldest, and Joan. Playgrounds were huge — often, the entire campus was open to kids. Young students would be taken to the administration building for concerts and plays. A swimming pool in the administration’s basement was occasionally used.

Photo: This rendering shows the Education Building as it opened in 1928.

Classes had different student teachers for music, for reading, for math. Teachers read to students twice a day, and they all read aloud in a reading circle on a daily basis. The energy, even for the young, on a college campus was contagious.

“We got exposed to so many things at that school,” Joan said. “The atmosphere was always happy. It’s really hard to explain how exciting learning can be at that age.”

While her father got work at Pantex and later on road maintenance for Randall County, Geneva and school fit like a well-worn glove. It was where she thrived. It was where her strengths began to show. She had an air about her — natural leadership and self-confidence.

She would sashay her way down the hall. During recess, she would come inside five minutes early to comb her hair. Even at that age, Geneva was conscious of how she dressed, and others followed.

If she started to wear a white blouse on a couple of Mondays in a row, then the rest of the girls in her class began to wear white blouses on Monday. When she started wearing a red sweater on Thursdays during the cool months, everyone else began to wear red sweaters that day.

“I always wanted to be Geneva when I grew up,” Joan said.

In sixth grade, Geneva decided she wanted to attend Canyon public school and leave the WT demonstration school. No one can recall the exact reason why other than perhaps fate called.

Enter Stanley Schaeffer

That same year, George W. Schaeffer moved his family into Canyon at the request of his wife. The family farmed and lived near Ceta Canyon, but in 1945, at the end of World War II, it seemed like a good time to be closer to people.

After going to elementary school in Happy, young Stanley Schaeffer started sixth grade in Canyon. It was a fortuitous beginning. At an age when boys started to notice girls, he noticed this striking girl who was also starting her first year in the Canyon schools too. When Stanley’s desk was moved right behind Geneva’s, he believed this move to Canyon was going to work out just fine.

Photo: Geneva Gressett in her 1949 yearbook.

Their first date was on New Year’s Eve in 1947, their freshman year. They went to the movie at the Olympic Theater on the north side of the square in Canyon. Margaret O’Brien and Amarillo’s Cyd Charisse starred in “The Unfinished Dance.” Stanley very much wanted to slide a sweaty palm over to Geneva’s hand, a desire only one of them shared.

That would be the first of many dates in high school. They were as steady as two could be. When they graduated from Canyon High School in 1951, they waited nearly a month before getting married.

“Two kids, barely 18 years old — it would seem like the type of marriage destined for failure,” Stanley said.

Especially when Jackie, the first of three children, came along two years later. There was never any question both would attend college. With the new name of West Texas State College, it seemed the logical place to go. It was affordable. It offered what they both needed educationally. And it was in their hometown.

“We used to arrange our classes where we could trade out Jackie on the steps of Old Main,” Stanley said. “One of us would be coming into class and hand off Jackie as the other was leaving class.”

Both graduated in 1955. For Geneva, teaching was like breathing. It was hard to imagine her not doing so. In a way, she had been destined to do so nearly all her life. Reading, especially, was a calling.

Geneva taught her sister Joan to read before she started school. The eldest sister would get a wooden box, gather all the pencils in a cup, get a book or two and teach the young ones the basics of reading on the living room floor.

“When she went off to teach school, I said, ‘This is it. She found her calling,’” Joan said. “She couldn’t help it. Teaching was that way to her.”

Teaching was just part of it, though a big part. The other part was who was on the other end of teaching. Geneva poured herself into others. She had an affinity for others, particularly those who seemed not to fit in. Her personality would overwhelm perceived misfits.

“If she saw you on campus, and you looked sad, she might follow you around and speak to you, and find out if you were having a bad day,” Joan said. “After she got through with you, you were having a good day.”

She and good friend Helen Piehl would spot new freshmen moving into dorms, and gravitate to those who seemed quiet and shy.

“Before they would leave the room, Geneva would know their names and tell them we’re going to have lunch together,” Joan said. “She would say, ‘We’re going to get acquainted and don’t think I’m teasing you.’ Anyone who needed attention, she gave it to them.”

After both received their degrees, Stanley’s new job took the Schaeffers to Houston for two years where she taught two years at Jane Long Junior High. Then they moved back to the Panhandle, specifically Dimmitt, where she taught reading and history at the junior high for 15 years.

Geneva earned her masters at Colorado State University in Fort Collins, which had a nationally renowned program in reading and testing. Well before online classes, she went to Fort Collins over three summers and stayed in a dorm. Two of her children—by that time, sons David and Jerry were born—would stay with her. The other child remained with Stanley, who would come up every other weekend in a Volkswagen.

Like her father before her, Geneva was a voracious reader, devouring three to five books a week. Stanley estimated she read between 15,000 and 20,000 books in her lifetime. On long vacations, one suitcase would carry her books. The Kindle would eventually become a godsend.

“Reading was her world,” Stanley said, “and she would go in a panic if she ever got caught without a book.”

‘We can do that, can’t we, Stanley?’

Photo: Geneva and Stanley Schaeffer visit with Don Albrecht, former vice president for student affairs.

Stanley was fully on board with Geneva’s educational pursuits — and her habit of not taking “no” for an answer. As he joked, and probably not inaccurately, Geneva was the facilitator, and he was the financier.

“She was excellent in seeing a need or someone coming to her with a need to recognize that and implement a way to fill that need,” Stanley said. “She would get this idea and bounce it off me and look out of the corner of her eye and say, ‘We can do that, can’t we, Stanley?’ I would roll my eyes and say, ‘Yes, I think we can.’”

That would eventually be the answer any way, so why prolong things? After 17 years of teaching, Geneva left the daily classroom but never left pursuing the betterment of students in the Panhandle.

Schaeffer became a certified public accountant of nearly 50 years. He also had investments in banking, oil and gas, cattle feedyards, grain elevators, farming and ranching, manufacturing and cable television. With all of that, the Schaeffer family has maintained a long history of philanthropy in the Panhandle, nowhere more so than at WT, where their imprint is all over campus.

“She was not overbearing or pushy,” Stanley said, “but she had a way of presenting a project to you and you were convinced immediately that this was what we needed to do.”

Geneva pushed for opportunities in education, leadership development and support of youth programs with the focus on WT and scholarships in the Texas Panhandle.

That led to recognition from numerous philanthropic and service groups, almost as many as the boards and organizations she served.

There were two things Geneva was not good at. One was singing – “she was horrible,” Joan said – and the other was receiving a compliment.

“She would change the subject to something else,” Stanley said. “She would deflect that. Not that she didn’t appreciate it, but when she was the focus, it made her feel uncomfortable.”

In 2016, she received an honorary doctorate in philosophy from WT’s College of Education and Social Sciences. It was also the same year she died at age 82 on April 17. She and Stanley, born a month apart in 1933, were married just shy of 65 years.

For nearly 30 years, the Education Building on the WT campus has been empty, a landmark that has been vacant. For more than 20 years, Geneva and Stanley shared a what-if dream of bringing that building back to life.

Photo: Stanley Schaeffer, second from left, is surrounded by children David, Jackie and Jerry at the official naming of the Geneva Schaeffer Education Building on Feb. 21.

On the third Monday of February 2022, more than 150 people attended a press conference in Legacy Hall, adjacent to that landmark, where it was announced that education was returning to that building . Dr. Neil Terry, WT provost and executive vice president of academic affairs, unveiled plans that the building would house WT’s Graduate School and serve as a hub for digital learning for students far beyond the physical confines of the campus.

A total of $45 million from the Texas state legislature will renovate “Old Ed.” Another $2.5 million from the Schaeffer family will support the restoration of the building and keep alive the memory of a young girl from the 1940s who stepped foot in that building to learn and never stopped.

WT students and faculty will one day open the doors to the new Geneva Schaeffer Education Building.

“If anyone ever grabbed onto a star and learned how to make it halfway shiny, it was Geneva Schaeffer,” Joan said. “She was a star in her own right, and she was because she brought out the best in people. She made her star shine by making others stars shine too.”

Do you know of a student, faculty member, project, an alumnus or any other story idea for “WT: The Heart and Soul of the Texas Panhandle?” If so, email Jon Mark Beilue at jbeilue@wtamu.edu .