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- HELEN B. GEERS, CIVIC ACTIVIST
GOP volunteer and poll worker encouraged all to vote
By Jim Calhoun
The Cincinnati Enquirer
Helen B. Geers believed everyone has a civic duty to vote.
She took that duty seriously, and she wasn't very patient with those who didn't.
She spent more than two decades working at polling precincts, registering people to vote and encouraging the elderly to cast absentee ballots, in Hamilton and Clermont counties.
The Amelia resident died of complications from heart disease Tuesday in Clermont Mercy Hospital. She was 88.
"She worked right up until she was 85. She was still registering voters and (being) aggravated when they didn't vote." said her daughter, Mary A. Haverkamp.
Mrs. Geers simply could not fathom how anyone could be disinterested in civic affairs.
"She thought they should be participating in their government," said Haverkamp, who lives in Clermont County's Monroe Township.
Mrs. Geers was a GOP Central Committee Woman, which means she was in charge on election day at her home precincts in Batavia and Amelia.
"She was very active in our party," said John Born, former Republican chairman of Clermont County. "She was very supportive of Republican principles and local leadership."
Mrs. Geers, a native of Morehead, Kentucky, belonged to the Order of the Eastern Star chapter in Amelia and the Clermont County Republican Club. She also volunteered at some events for the county Alcohol, Drug Addiction and Mental Health Services Board.
Mrs. Geers is also survived by a son, Richard Boothe of Newport, Kentucky; six grandchildren and seven great-children.
Her husband, former Cincinnati police Officer Alphonse Geers, whom she married in 1939, died in 1960.
Funeral service is 9:30 a.m. Saturday in E. C. Nurre Funeral Home, 177 W. Main St., Amelia. Visitation is Friday from 5 to 8 p.m., with Eastern Star service at 7:30 p.m.. Burial will be in Mount Moriah Cemetery in Union Township.
Memorials can be made to the American Cancer Society, 25 N. Second St., Batavia, 45103.
Published in The Cincinnati Enquirer (Cincinnati, Ohio) on Thursday, September 5, 1991.
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