Sue Geckle loves people. People love Sue Geckle. I am a person, therefore I love Sue Geckle! Sorry–but I was just having a conversation with Colleen, and she was remembering how they learned a lot of logic in her Master’s program in rhetoric and composition.
But it’s still true: I really do love Sue! She and I met last week at The Common Kitchen to talk about her membership on the executive board of the local community service organization, HopeWorks.
“At HopeWorks I’m a member of the Board of Directors,” she said with her hands resting politely in her lap.
Sue strikes a lissome silhouette, and at a get-together at her house this past fall, I saw some old pictures of her and her husband of 35 years, Will, and I saw that she was always as fit as can be. It shouldn’t have surprised me, then, to learn that she has a history of keen nutritional awareness. I found this out as I looked down at my notes scribbled all over a sheet of paper, and had to ask her to back up to tell me a little about her educational and work history. Even though we’ve been friends for close to three years, there was a lot I didn’t know.
“I started out as a dietician,” she said about her past. She was Director of Dietary at a nursing home in Catonsville. She landed there through her work with a company that did dietary services for nursing homes in Baltimore. Then she went back to school and got her Master’s in Nutritional Sciences from the University of Maryland, after which she continued to work in the field of dietetics.
In 2002 she began the job she had when I met her in 2016, which was a Help Desk technician at Howard Community College.
While all that was going on, she and Will also had three children: David, 33; Theresa, 29; and Andrew, 24.
“Now I work part-time as a Registration Assistant in the Office of Records and Registration,” she told me.
Many months ago, Sue told me she’s “a worker bee.” And it’s so true. It’s part of why people turn to her when they need to move an organization forward, like HopeWorks. And when she commits to something, she sees it through. There are term limits for HopeWorks Board Members, but Sue hopes to be involved a few years down the road, and to have gained an intimate understanding of all the group has to offer. She told me she takes her membership on the HopeWorks board very seriously, and I have no doubt.
“A friend asked me if I was interested, so I applied and was accepted,” she recounted.
HopeWorks is a local non-profit that serves survivors of domestic violence, sexual violence, and human trafficking. It offers a 24-hour hotline, emergency housing, counseling, and legal assistance. It’s one of Howard County’s primary organizations doing this work.
According to the group’s website, its “mission is to provide support and advocacy for people in Howard County affected by sexual and intimate partner violence and engage the community in creating the change required for prevention.”
“If someone goes to the hospital because of being beaten or abused in any way, it will have people come to the hospital to be with the person and help them navigate the system,” she said. That was a role tailor-made for Sue, though she hasn’t had an opportunity to do it just yet. Her even temper is comforting. And as I said, she’s always there when you need her to be. Carole Fisher, a local Democratic party ultra-volunteer told me that when she wants to be sure something that’s important to her will get done, she goes to Sue.
All the Buzz on Busy Bee-hood
“I tend to be a worker bee,” she told me, smiling. She doesn’t, however, want to usurp attention or do things just for the accolades. After she had been president of the Ellicott City and Western Howard Democratic Club (EC&WHDC) for two years, she voluntarily stepped down from the post. I begged her to stay, as I was Vice President and felt like I was still learning how to be a good one under her tutelage. She declined, saying she didn’t want it to turn into “The Sue Club.” If there were such a club, I’d probably join it, that being said. During the previous two years before one of our monthly meetings, I asked Sue what I could do a couple days beforehand. She said that I should just bring my “sparkling personality.” Of course, I couldn’t help smiling at the lovely compliment and thanking her, but I did have to note that she’s so darn good at being president, I felt l hadn’t done enough. She always did it all!
Our good mutual friend, Carole Fisher, the same one mentioned above, told what my primary job was as Veep. She told me it was to run the organization should Sue be unable to. Wouldn’t you know it, a week later, Sue had a meeting of The Citizen’s Election Fund to attend and couldn’t make the monthly EC&WHDC monthly meeting. So running the meeting was up to me. I prepared a few remarks and made my way to the restaurant we were meeting at temporarily while we worked out some administrative kinks with the restaurant that served as our normal meeting grounds. As the clock ticked toward meeting-start-time, I began to feel nervous. I could never fill Sue’s shoes! And then–just before I crawled out of a back window–who should walk in smiling slightly, wearing matching earrings and purse, but Sue!
Later on the same day I met with Sue, I was in Ellicott City on Route 40, where I often find myself getting a delicious treat from one of the bakeries that another local activist, Lisa Brusio Coster, introduced me to. In fact, I bumped into her there! I told her how I’d just met with Sue, a person we both cherish and admire.
“I know she’s going to work diligently with HopeWorks in engaging the entire community to change the conditions that allow sexual and domestic violence,” Lisa said to me, nodding. Lisa owns a communications consulting firm and one of its achievements every year is to put on the 50+ Expo. It’s a huge event that goes from early in the morning to the evening and is a who’s who of local bigwigs from various sectors of the community: political, activist, non-profit, small business, and on and on.
Back at The Common Kitchen, Sue and I turned our heads quickly as we saw the chilly wind fling a woman’s winter coat high in the air while still on her back. I looked back at Sue and she was wearing her ever-unflustered expression but smiling slightly.
I asked her what her favorite part about her work with HopeWorks was.
“One of the things I like most is working in a group with a common focus. It just feels good,” she responded. She told me that Jennifer Pollitt Hill, the Executive Director, and Mia Green, the Development Manager, are “amazing” and it makes those who work alongside them want to support their efforts.
Sue is on the sub-committee charged with fund development.
“We do get grants from different organizations, but there’s always a need for funds,” she said. She asked that I make sure to mention the upcoming Hope Bowl, the competitive bowling event the group does annually. It will be at Bowlero Normandy. I looked off into the distance, and Sue stopped talking mid-sentence.
Fun With Funds
“Was last year’s event around $250 per lane and at the lanes in Columbia? Before she could do more than nod, I told her I’d taken part in it last year, forming a team with local activist and attorney Dawn Millman Popp and some of her friends. I performed miserably at the bowling part, but the music, pizza, and getting to meet new friends were still a blast.
“This year it’s going to be at that new location in Ellicott City, though,” Sue added.
Given that Sue works on bringing in funds for HopeWorks, the eternal endeavor of most non-profits, I asked her where the greatest need was within the many services the group offers. She reminded me she’s still a bit of a newbie on the board, but she had more to say.
“I don’t know what the greatest need would be, but I can imagine it would be housing,” she said. I thought about how that response–true as it undoubtedly was–was very “Sue” because it was both pragmatic and compassionate.
It reminded me of another time I had a Sue-related–or lack-of-Sue-related, really–panic attack. That was when I realized if Sue weren’t on the executive board of the EC&WHDC, she wouldn’t be putting together the holiday party that the local Democratic clubs throw every year. Sue always does so much for that shindig, I wondered how it would survive without her. I comforted myself with the knowledge that she’d still be around, attend, and no doubt help out in myriad ways.
“I took some notes,” Sue said, “because there were certain things I wanted to be sure to mention.” As she pulled a sheet from a notepad out of her purse, she brought with it a card with my name on it. I couldn’t imagine what it would say, but it was a thank you for getting her a gift for her last EC&WHDC meeting as president.
I could see that she’d written Youth Leadership Volunteer on the notebook paper. I asked her to tell me about that.
The purpose, Sue said, is to teach young people to stand up for themselves.
“If we can prevent someone from being in a situation that’s not healthy in the first place, that’s much better than trying to treat the aftermath,” she said.
I glanced at my wrist and realized I had to get to an appointment in downtown Columbia, so I’d better get going. I thanked Sue, but I could tell she had something more to say.
“If there’s something I can do to help,” she said, “I’m going to do it.” And, readers: sometimes it’s just as simple as that. Or sometimes it’s not, but Sue comes in and makes it so!
As I braced myself against the wind on my way out to my car, I thought of that Talmudic quote one hears often when one runs in progressive circles: “You are not obligated to complete the work, but neither are you free to abandon it.” In the world of that quote, I like to think, time is circular. Pain and strife exist potentially forever, and the work of the activist is to continually act to heal whatever she can. I tend to see a goal in my activist work, in a Western, male, and linear way, as an endpoint after which I’m done. It struck me that Sue acts in a way that says “revolving time”–you act but you don’t stop acting after some theoretical point. And in that workd of revolving time, eventually comes revolution.
Own It
“I really came into my own after I got involved in HoCo politics,” said local writer and activist, Akbi Khan in an email exchange with me. She added that Sue was a big part of that journey of self-actualization for her. Even when she didn’t learn something explicitly from Sue, she said she knew she could always count on her for tips, refreshers, and clarifications. One conversation they had in particular and that she recounted to me summed up how hope–not despair–is what motivates Sue.
Akbi and Sue were exchanging stories about how they got involved in activism. Sue was seated in the second row of seats at the Jeffers Hill Neighborhood Center just after a meeting of the Columbia Democratic Club. She said the excitement, hope, and “yes we can” of the Obama campaign in got her involved.
“I just fell in love and stayed involved ever since,” Sue said. It stuck with Akbi, she told me, because what got her involved was the desperate feeling she had post-2016 and Trump’s win. Akbi told me that while she eventually stayed for the same reasons as Sue–optimism, a sense of agency, and a belief in all the wonderful possibilities a life in advocacy can fill you with, it still took a special person to react to positive feelings with action rather than complacency.
Thanks for reading! Check back with us here at rocoinhoco.com every week as Robert, Colleen (and pup, Moses) get to know the many facets—one each week–of this prismatic place called Howard County. We want to take you along with us, so follow us on Twitter at @rocoinhoco, join our Facebook group, and follow us on Instagram at @rocoinhoco.