Thomas V. Md Geocaris

Thomas Victor Geocaris, MD, F.A.C.S., passed away peacefully on Tuesday, April 10, 2012, at his home in Allouez with his family by his side. Tom courageously lived while battling pancreatic cancer for over a year. Born to parents Theodore and Helen Geocaris, Tom lived his younger years in Chicago and Mount Prospect, Illinois. After completing medical school, he relocated to Green Bay, Wisconsin where he practiced general surgery with compassion and grace for 34 years. Tom had the opportunity to practice for the last ten years with his daughter, Cynthia Geocaris at Surgery Specialists of Green Bay. His wife Patty, and children Mike, Tim, and Kerry all had the pleasure of working with him in the family business. Based on Tom’s athletic physique and determination one may not be surprised to learn that Tom was a 2 time state champion and NCAA medal winner in gymnastics (event: rings). Tom was able to attend college on scholarship due to his earlier successes and excellence in gymnastics, a sport that he and friends originally thought might be fun to “try out.” Tom was an avid sailor for more than half of his life. He belonged to the United States Power Squadron, an organization dedicated to improving maritime safety. He loved to share tours on his boat, the “Ci-Mi-Ti-Ke II” (named after his four children) with any friend or family member that wanted to test the waters of Door County and Michigan. Whether in Wisconsin or halfway around the world, at the helm, Tom would often relax to the sounds of the Kingston Trio or Jimmy Buffett. The peace he enjoyed while sailing was contagious to everyone fortunate enough to have shared a voyage with him. Tom also loved to be in the water as much as he did on it. He was a master scuba diver having logged over 960 adventures, 50 of which he completed while receiving radiation and chemotherapy. He dove in countless waters throughout the world, from the icy waters of Lake Michigan to the Galapagos Islands. He had a trained eye to catch the intricate details of the wildlife that many would miss, symbolic of the vision he maintained above water. He also made the best of his winter months on these trips as well as “bombing” the ski slopes of Wisconsin, Michigan, Colorado, and the British Columbia, the last of which he enjoyed mere months ago. Tom loved to share these adventures with his family and friends throughout the years. He seemed most pleased to have watched his children and grandchildren follow in his footsteps with these passions. Despite the time constraints essential to providing care to his patients that he would not compromise, Tom found the time to be ever present in his wife’s, children’s, and grandchildren’s lives. While Patty was there to take care of the many bumps, bruises, and tears of the children’s lives, Tom was always there with her when it mattered most, from a family crisis to a holiday to a major life event. Tom made numerous professional achievements throughout his life. He served on the Bellin Health Board of Directors and was Chairman of the Bellin Health Surgery Department. Tom led in the development of the first robotic surgery program in the Green Bay area and was one of three general surgeons in the country using robotics at the time. Tom was the first surgeon in Green Bay to perform bariatric surgery and the first to do a single site surgery. Those who knew Tom as a professional also knew him “personally” as there was little divide between the two. He was an exemplary teacher, precise and compassionate surgeon, and a perpetual “jokester” with a child-like sense of humor enjoyed by all. Tom and Patty came to Green Bay with only a hope and a dream of the successes they later achieved. With Patty by his side, he started a successful surgery practice and joyfully raised 4 children who chose to remain in the area to share their families with their parents. Tom enjoyed the blessings shared in his role as husband, father, and “bompa” to his grandchildren. Despite being diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, Tom chose to live his life to the fullest without letting cancer get in the way of enjoying passions and hobbies and sharing time with those whom he loved most. In the last year alone, he was able to create more everlasting memories with his family than many are fortunate enough to experience in a lifetime. Tom is survived by his wife, Patricia “Patty”, with whom he shared their love in marriage for 47 years; his four children (all residing in Green Bay), Dr. Cynthia Geocaris (Stephen Scripp), Michael Geocaris (Pamela Weiner, friend), Timothy (Nikki) Geocaris, and Kerry Geocaris (Bradford Bordini); 8 grandchildren including Ryan Scripp, Stephen Scripp, Michael Scripp, and Madeline Scripp; Timothy Geocaris, Tommy Geocaris; Elliot Bordini and Teya Bordini. He also is survived by his siblings Jim Geocaris (Woodridge, Illinois) and Christie Karis (Seattle, Washington). In lieu of other expressions, donations can be made out to “The Thomas Geocaris Memorial Fund.” The Geocaris family would like to thank the following people who compassionately provided care and support to Tom and the rest of the family, for which we are eternally grateful: The Bellin Cancer Team, Bellin Hospital Staff, Unity Hospice, Dr. Tahlsidar, Dr. Amy James, Dr. Ian Sproat, and all the volunteers who cared for Tom at home including Nicole Belter, Jenna Fredrick, Roxanne Roellig, Kaylan Baron, Danielle Plennes, Lisa Thelen, Elizabeth Charles, Elyse Brauer, Casey Clardy, Cassie Sagen, Judy Chike, Liz Pronold, Sarah Collins, Kim Zellner, Megan McGinn, and Mary Jo Heise. Tom’s brother, Jim Geocaris, would like to share the following thoughts. Gods Plan For the past 13 months, I have been dealing with a great deal of sadness, confusion and anger about Tom’s illness and now his impending death. I have had a great deal of difficulty processing all of this. This past weekend, while in Green Bay to say our goodbyes to Tom, Pamela Weiner told my wife Claudia and me a story about a recent conversation she had with her own father. On the day she was speaking with him, he told her that it was his 34th anniversary. Pamela asked him what 34th anniversary it was, and he told her that it was the 34th anniversary of the day that Dr. Tom saved his life. That was about six years before Pamela was born! Her story really hit a nerve. Now all of the stories about Tom and the good things he had done had a face and a person whom I knew to go with it. That story has been running around in my head for several days, and it caused me to start to do some different kind of thinking about Tom, his journey, and the people he touched. I started thinking about the talk I gave at Tom’s retirement dinner and some of the same questions Kerry asked me about the other night in the family room about where we came from and how we grew up, but this time I took it back further, because on many levels Tom’s story was an unlikely one. As I think more about it, I start to wonder if maybe there has been a plan. In 1935, two people with very little in common met at the Aragon ballroom in Chicago. Our dad was Greek Orthodox and part of a small tight knit family and community from which one did not venture. Our mom was a Polish Catholic woman with seven brothers and sisters. The family was a raucous group. The men were all tradesmen. They worked hard and they partied hard. Aside from their enjoyment of dancing and the fact that neither one of them had any money our parents came from very different worlds. They were a couple that by most of the norms at the time shouldn’t have developed a relationship; much less plan a life together. Yet, after a time, they decided they did want to build a life together. Mom would not marry outside of her faith, so dad converted to Catholicism. The fact that he changed religions and married a non Greek person in 1938 caused a major rift in the family. It was several years before, that rift began to heal. As they started their life together, our parents basically had the clothes on their backs and had to live with our jadga and busia along with several of our mom’s younger siblings during the first couple years of their marriage. Over the span of eight years they had three children, and our dad also went off to serve his country in the navy toward the end of World War II. After dad returned from the service, they rented the main floor in a bungalow on Central Avenue in Chicago. After a time, the landlord passed away, and the house was bought out by a neighboring factory that was planning to expand. Our parents, having to find a new place to live, learned of a family member’s cousin who had a lot in Mt. Prospect, Illinois. With the support of our mom’s brothers and brothers-in-law, who were all tradesmen, and with the generosity of a local banker who financed a construction loan without any money down, our parents built a very small three-bedroom house in Mt. Prospect, Illinois. It was only about a 20-mile move, but it was a leap into a different world for our parents and for us. We definitely did not have the resources and assets that most of our neighbors had. Both of our parents had to work just to pay bills and stay afloat. We were a two income family decades before it was a reality for most people. In addition, around the time of our move there our “jadga” passed away, and “busia” came to live with us. So, in our three-bedroom house, our parents had a room; “busia” had a room; and the three kids had a room with two pull out couches and a studio cot. As we settled into life in a new world, Tom began to meet new people, make new friends and have experiences that neither he nor any of us would have imagined living in Chicago. As I have said on several occasions, Tom liked to have a good time. He was often in the middle or on the edge of some teenaged activity that resulted in him being brought home by the police or on a couple of occasions, our dad having to go pick him up or go to court on his behalf. Needless to say, dad didn’t have the same sense of humor that Tom did about all this. There were also pranks that did not involve the police like turning a greased pig loose in the school library and cementing a toilet to the front of Arlington Heights High School. During those years, Tom also got exposed to a new sport, gymnastics. He quickly found out that he was very strong and that he was really good at it. That sport is not one in which a person normally experiences a high degree of success in a short time. In high school, he was a two timed state champion on the still rings, doing moves that few people in the country did at that time. At the end of his senior year, Tom was being courted by several major university gymnastics programs. He finally accepted a full scholarship to Southern Illinois University, because it was one of the premier men’s gymnastics programs in the country at the time. There was no talk about majors or careers or plans. While at Southern, Tom finished second in the still rings competition in his sophomore year and earned All American honors. What is important here is that if our parents had not been evicted from the home they were renting and taken the chance of moving from the city to the suburbs, in all likelihood Tom would not have found gymnastics, and he probably would not have gone to college. And had Tom not gone to Southern Illinois University, he may have not had the conversation with a fraternity brother about selecting a major. The fraternity brother said that he had noticed that Tom was good in Biology. According to Tom, that conversation started him thinking. All of us pretty much know the rest of the story: his journey through medical school, his marriage to Patty, their decision to move to Green Bay, their children and grandchildren, and his presence in the medical community in Green Bay for 34 years. As we struggle to make sense of what has happened over the past year, I think it helps to take a step back and look at this from a larger picture. On a yearly basis Tom probably saw about 3000 patients and performed 600 surgeries per year for 34 years (about twice the national average for surgeries performed). He basically touched the lives of the number of people who live in Green Bay, Wisconsin. Because a percentage of his surgeries were lifesaving, he has also touched the lives of people who may have not ever been born were it not for his efforts. So, as I try to sort out my feelings of confusion, sadness and anger, I start to think that maybe God DOES have a plan. And that there was a plan for Tom to come to Green Bay to heal people and to touch people’s lives. At the time, I don’t think Tom knew this was the plan. He was just doing what he was going to do. If you talked to him later in life as his faith matured, I think he would have acknowledged that this was the place he was supposed to be and that this was what he was supposed to do. As I think about a kid from the city who was uprooted to the suburbs, who happened to find something he was good at, who as a result went to college, who then found a passion for a profession that touched so many lives, I am thinking that God has a plan for all of us, but He doesn’t always fill in the details, and it is up to us to choose whether or not to follow the plan. Over the years I have heard priests and ministers talk about God’s plan and have found myself wondering how do we know. People talk about having faith and that we will find God’s plan. But in looking at Tom’s life, I am thinking it might be simpler than that. And in that simplicity, we find its elegance. God’s plan, I think, is twofold. One is to try to do some good in your life. Our careers, our education, our titles, our stature doesn’t matter. What does matter is that we all have the capacity to do “good”. It is about making a decision to make a positive difference for someone in some way. If we accept that as God’s plan, He’ll help us work out the details. Finally, I think the other aspect of God’s plan for us is that He DOES want us to enjoy this precious gift He has given us. He wants us to take time to laugh, to love and to marvel at the world around us. Tom did all that. I think we all try to make meaning out of our life and in doing so we often look to those around us, especially our heroes and role models. As I look at the life of my brother, this is what he taught me. Tom is with God now. He has fulfilled God’s plan for him and has been called home. I hope that they are ready for him in heaven. I don’t think it will be long before one morning all those cherubs flying around up there will have somehow been greased up during the night and they will be flying and screaming, and generally raising a ruckus. I have this vision of St. Peter telling Michael the archangel to get this situation under control, and Michael will be yelling and diving at the cherubs only to have them slip away. Off to the side on a bench will be my brother, legs crossed, hands behind his head totally laughing at the chaos he caused. On another day there will be a morning when God and St. Peter are doing their rounds. They will hear some chaos by the gates of heaven and will look out to see what is going on, only to find some celestial apparatus cemented to the gates of heaven. I see them just looking at each other, shaking their heads and saying, “Welcome home, Tom.”