Note: This article was originally published on Jan. 30, 2005. We’re re-posting it now for our tribute to Colorado’s Fallen.
Dolores – The U.S. Army and two small towns in southwestern Colorado came together to bury 27-year-old Pfc. George Geer on
Friday.
A Fort Carson chaplain and an Army Honor Guard brought their time-tested cadences and solemnity to the Dolores High School
gymnasium, where Geer graduated a decade ago and where his funeral services were held.
Geer was killed Jan. 17 by a car bomb in Ar Ramadi, Iraq. His patrol partner, Army Staff Sgt. Thomas Vitagliano, 33, of New Haven, Conn., also died.
For a fallen hero such as Geer, small towns do what they can to register the loss and to heap homegrown honors. The basketball
backboard was raised to make more room for the flag-draped casket. The stage was decorated at one end of the gym with wreaths and
bouquets of carnations, chrysanthemums and gladioluses.
And hundreds of people came from around Dolores and Cortez, where Geer had lived with his parents, Harold and Lois, and his sister,
Hope. Mourners filled the gym bleachers and many long rows of folding chairs.
Before services began, a loudspeaker blared country-western odes to patriotic young men and to fast cars, for which Geer had a zeal and
fondness. And the loudspeaker also played Elvis Presley’s version of “Amazing Grace,” later reprised on bagpipes.
Geer’s commanding officers eulogized him as “an exceptional warrior,” a focused, no-nonsense young leader who was trusted with
a 50-caliber machine gun on the most important missions.
“He was the kind of guy you wanted next to you in a firefight,” a commander said in a statement read at the funeral.
The chaplain, Maj. R. Cope Mitchell Jr., said the best among us are often taken young because they are the ones willing to make the
ultimate sacrifice for the rest of us.
“The blood of our soldiers is the seed of freedom,” Mitchell said.
The Army gave Geer many awards, among them the Bronze Star, the Purple Heart and the Good Conduct Medal, arrayed on a thick blue
cushion resting in a wooden tray. A soldier held them out close to Geer’s parents, so they could see them clearly.
Then the hearse took Geer’s casket to the Cortez Cemetery, where the Army buried him with full military honors.
In Cortez, people remember Geer as a car “nut,” and a motorcycle and Jeep enthusiast, who worked at auto and tire dealerships,
competed at drag races and restored vintage muscle cars with his father.
One auto dealership on Broadway in Cortez made a shrine of Geer’s 1967 Plymouth Barracuda, displayed all last week under a banner and
flowers.
And on Jan. 22, the High Altitude Steel Car Club, of which Geer reportedly was a member before he was of legal age to drive, staged
a memorial cruise after a rendezvous at the Burger Boy Drive In on Main Street.
Geer also had enjoyed skiing, hunting, horseback riding and four-wheeling in his beloved Colorado mountains. But, his father
says, he also had bigger dreams of adventures and good deeds in faraway places. He was weighing a possible lifelong career in the
military against the idea of becoming a well-traveled geography teacher.
Harold Geer says he didn’t just love his son; he admired him. “I wouldn’t have traded him for anybody,” he said.
There is a new monument to George Geer. The local Civil Air Patrol, with help from groups as diverse as the Blue Star Moms and Sky Ute
Redi-Mix, erected a flagpole, with a lighting system, outside the Geers’ home on the rural outskirts of Cortez.
Citizens State Bank of Cortez and Dolores State Bank have set up memorial funds in Geer’s name to help his family with burial and
other expenses.
Geer is survived by his parents; his sister; his grandmother, Shirley Geer of Coldwater, Mich.; and many aunts, uncles, nieces,
nephews and cousins. George Geer was preceded in death by his 19-year-old brother, Chad, who died in a car accident in 1989.
