The sounds of students playing basketball intermixed with laughter echoed throughout the small, busy room tucked away within West Jessamine High School’s gymnasium. Dean Geary sunk his well-traveled frame into the chair and leaned back. His ever-present windbreaker was wrapped snug around his body as if reluctant to let the nearly 30 years of teaching memories go.
But his time at West was drawing to a close.
And Geary knew it. His wizened and jocund face morphed into a canvas of sadness as he reflected on the many joyful moments that secured his place amongst Jessamine County’s most honored figures. Moments that will soon become memories of a bygone era.
After years of watching children breeze through his classrooms — only to graduate and return with their own brood of future West students — the drivers education, gym and athletic training teacher was tired of fighting the system. He was tired of the heaps of paperwork; he was tired of spending more time focusing on the bureaucracy of school than on the students.
It was time to hang up his teaching cap, lace up his golfing shoes and jet off into the fog of retirement. For Geary, it was time to focus on his family and to focus on himself; it was time to close one chapter and begin writing another.
Ironically, the opening chapter of Geary’s journey reads much like a fairy tale. You see, his journey to West began with a book.
A book he discovered over 40 years ago in a gymnasium storage closet at Western High School in Louisville where Geary was a freshman basketball manager for then-Warriors head coach Jim Schurfranz. During practice one day, Schurfranz instructed a young Geary to go clean out the closet.
While cleaning, he happened upon “Cramer’s Athletic Trainer in the 70s.” He recalled browsing through its pages and thinking to himself,” … this is interesting.” Little did he know that with those three words, the gears of Geary’s life were set in motion.
Though, much like the story arc of classic fairy tales, a character’s rise is met with conflict.
Soon after earning his Cramer Athletic Training Badge with the help of Schurfranz, Geary suffered a devastating freak injury: During the first day spring break of his freshman year of high school, he lost his finger in a motorcycle mishap on his uncle’s farm.
Growing up in the western coal fields of Ohio County, Kentucky, Geary was raised throughout the farm lands and rolling hills of middle america. It was a life that relied upon hard work, resiliency and determination.
All of which Geary posseses in spades.
He recovered, and for three summers throughout high school he would head over to western Kentucky for a week-long athletic training sports medicine camp. Between his junior and senior years, he won the academic award for “scoring the highest on the tests that they gave us,” he said.
That success allowed him to earn a scholarship at Western Kentucky University. Geary spent five years with the Hilltoppers. There, he learned the ins and outs of athletic training. He travelled with the football team as they won OVC championships, and he experienced the quirks of preparation by the swimming team.
“Oh, I loved it down there,” he fondly recalled.
He was hooked, but he was not reeled in.
He understood how the world worked. So, he developed a back-up plan. He earned his teaching certificate with the idea that he could become a substitute teacher should he not find an athletic training job down the road.
With five years at WKU under his belt, he graduated and accepted a graduate assistant program offer from the University of Kentucky. His time at UK was a blur of memories. Some pleasant and others not. He told of stories about driving to away football games days prior to game day. The drive sometimes would take all night; he only flew once at the behest of then-head athletic trainer Al Green.
Even still, Geary was almost kicked off in favor of an alumnus.
Geary’s favorite story at UK involved former tight end Robert Mangas. It took place in the early 1980s during a game at the University of Tennessee.
During a timeout, Geary ran onto the field to pass around towels to the players. In route, he turned to yell for the other graduate assistant who remained on the sidelines with the water. Unaware of his surroundings, Geary slammed into Mangas as the tight end ran to the sideline.
As physics would dictate, when larger masses collide with smaller masses the force from the impact sends the smaller mass off course. In layman’s terms: Mangas knocked Geary on his butt.
That of course sent the team into fits of laughter.
“I think there were about 97,000 (people in the stands),” Geary said. “And I think about 92,000 saw me. As I started to run back off the field I saw that Al was laughing.”
So, he instead ran over to UK head football coach Jerry Claiborne. He remembers Claiborne saying, “Nice fall, Dean.” All Geary could come back with was “Thanks, coach.”
It’s while at UK that Geary’s story begins its arc towards the city of Nicholasville. Facing few athletic training offers, Geary put his teaching certificate to use and starting substituting at Jessamine County High School. He volunteered with the Jessamine County Rescue Squad, as well.
There, he built relationships that over time nurtured his love for the small town. A town much like the one he grew up in.
“It was similar to where I had spent my summers on the farm,” Geary said.
Yet, it wasn’t meant to be at the time. After graduating from UK, Geary finally secured a job at Centre College as an athletic trainer. He spent three years there. It was only then — through an outreach program by Central Baptist Hospital Center for Sports Health 29 years ago — that Geary got his first athletic training job at Jessamine County High.
He started teaching two years later, and he hasn’t left since. That is until now.
“I’ve always said that teaching is my job, and athletic training is my profession,” Geary said.
After 27 years, his time teaching at West has drawn to a close; however, his time as an athletic trainer forges on, for the time being. He hopes to continue in the same capacity as the school’s trainer, but he remains uncertain of his fate.
“I was lucky to be here,” Geary said as he watched his class leave following the bell. “My kids were here with me; I got to see my daughter play sports, my son’s art and I got to see them graduate; I met my wife here and saw my step-sons graduate … I loved to be here.”