“It is not our part to master all the tides of the world, but to do what is in us for the succour of those years wherein we are set, uprooting the evil in the fields that we know, so that those who live after may have clean earth to till. What weather they shall have is not ours to rule.”
Navigation
Memories and Stories:
Reflections from family and friends. You will find a form here for submitting your own reflections.
For the Ocean:
Geoff worked for the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) since the 1980s. Information about his work and memories from his colleagues can be found here.
Across the Land:
Geoff’s long account of cycling the Canadian Rockies and (not yet uploaded) shorter accounts of rides on a recumbent trike.
Through the Sky:
Geoff became a licensed ham radio operator when he was 12 years old. He enjoyed building and operating radios, using Morse Code, participating in radio clubs, exploring low power transmission, contests including Field Day and using satellites to make radio contacts.
Playlist and other favorites (movies, books etc)
this section is under construction.
Geoff had eclectic tastes in music enjoying a wide range of artists from Emerson, Lake and Palmer to Stravinsky. A prodigious reader, he had an abiding interest in the works of JRR Tolkein, the patience to read long, detailed tomes about history and a wide range of other topics. He especially enjoyed reading aloud to his children, grandkids, and me.
This section is under construction.
2019 aboard MV Fundy Rose between St John, New Brunswick and Digby, Nova Scotia
Thank you for joining us here on the memorial website for Geoff Allsup.
One day, in 2022, Geoff came across the Tolkien quote above. When he read it to me, it was clear that it moved him. What I did not know a the time, was that he copied the quote into his phone notes that we would discover after he passed away unexpectedly due to cardiac arrest on March 23, 2023.
The idea to create a memorial website arose when I discovered the internet home of Geoff’s Great Mountains Trip Report no longer existed. Geoff occasionally mentioned that internet statistics about this 1994 trip still showed a steady stream of readers. I was sure he would have wanted this account to remain available to those planning similar journeys. Soon, I found other stories and posts that Geoff would want shared, and it all added up to needing a website.
Geoff was devoted to the process of documentation which he may have picked up from family habits. He treasured the wartime diaries of his father, Percy. B Allsup, who had served in WWII and Korea and his grandfather, also Percy B. Allsup, http://www.pals.org.uk/allsup_diary01.htm who had been an English soldier in WWI. Geoff’s mom, Ruth Allsup, was also a careful documentarian, but, in her case, dedicated to discovering and recording family ancestry and to the much appreciated detailed captions on the family slide collection. We are scanning these slides now and some of them will appear here.
This is a place to remember the moments, the interests, the stories, and the seasons of Geoff’s life. A significant part of this website is pieces written or narrated by Geoff himself. Herein you’ll find his history of how he became a licensed ham radio operator in childhood, the previously mentioned story of the bike trip he and Ben made through the Canadian Rockies, a lengthy YouTube video of his presentation on how to use satellites in ham radio, and links to documentation related to oceanographic instruments he worked on at WHOI. Eventually some of his accounts (recorded on Rides with GPS) of excursions on his recumbent trike will be uploaded here as will his eclectic playlists and favorite books and movies.
The website title, There and Back Again, Geoff’s Story, was partially borrowed from the original title of The Hobbit: There and Back Again, a Hobbit’s Holiday. Back when we were in high school, I suggested that Geoff read Tolkien’s works. He liked to remember that he stayed up all night reading The Lord of the Rings before exams in his junior year. Eventually, he would read the series to me, to Ben and Nora and to grandkids. Most years when he was not reading the epic aloud, he read it to himself.
If you would like to share a memory or make a comment, please click on Memories and Stories where you will find a form. Comments from friends and family will be posted on the Memories and Stories page. If you are a colleague from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, your memory will be added to those of Geoff’s other co-workers found in the section For the Ocean. If you knew Geoff through ham radio, your words will be added to the section Through the Sky. You can also comment on the forms at the bottom of posts.
As I have worked on this website, I’ve become increasingly convinced of the importance of memorial websites about common people. We are likely to know more about Abraham Lincoln or Eleanor Roosevelt than we know about our own great grandparents. I can’t know who in the far future will read this partial documentation of one common, precious life that spanned the years 1951—2023 mostly near the east coast of North America. But, in closing, I send you future folk a quote from a letter that Geoff wrote to me in high school:
“I wish I knew what was going to happen to us. It seems so often like everyone is trying to destroy us. But the earth is still here. It’s so calm and quiet and constant and eternal. It would be so nice to be like the earth, like Tom Bombadil I suppose, so that nothing else really matters. I can feel so free and happy I can’t even describe it in my mind. Why can’t I make it real?”
My hope, dear future folk, is that all of you in your era have found a way to make it real, to be, like the earth, “calm and quiet and constant and eternal.”
Kim Allsup, June 2024
Obituary for Geoffrey Allsup https://www.chapmanfuneral.com/obituaries/Geoffrey-P-Allsup?obId=27583394