Giving in Harmony

Long-time music professor and handbell director, Herb Geisler, and wife Kiulan (Kiu) have been integral parts of the Concordia community for more than three decades, beginning when a young Herb came west in 1988 to join the music faculty. Kiu, a native of Hong Kong, enrolled at the university the following year, and the pair discovered one another, were married in 1994 and spent many years serving on Concordia’s campus as a faculty member (Herb) and library staff member (Kiu) until their recent retirements.

Now, the Geislers have honored the institution that brought them together by making Concordia part of their living trust.

“It’s been really exciting for me to see how the university has been flourishing,” says Herb. “The things they’ve done and the sense of culture they’ve built are amazing. I walk on campus, and it’s great to see students really engaged in what they’re doing.”

While serving as a teacher in Hong Kong in the 1980s, Kiu learned of Christ College while visiting near Irvine for a friend’s wedding. Though not intending to move permanently to the United States, she did hope to spend time studying overseas.

“I thought Christ College [now Concordia University Irvine] be a good fit for me,” she says. “I wanted to improve my English to be a more effective teacher.”

Her goal was to return to Hong Kong to continue teaching after earning her bachelor’s degree in behavioral science, but instead love struck. Kiu remembers meeting Herb for the first time — and how he began speaking to her in Cantonese, her native language.

“That meant a lot to me, because when I arrived, I hadn’t yet seen any Asian faces,” she says. “All of a sudden, this person I didn’t expect to talked to me in Cantonese. Certain moments in life you remember forever. That was one of those moments.”

Herb — born and raised in Manhattan, the Bronx, and Queens by Lutheran school teachers — had come to Irvine via Concordia Chicago, his undergraduate alma mater, and Michigan, where he taught at Concordia Ann Arbor. He also spent four years in the Kowloon area of Hong Kong teaching religion, music, and English as part of a baccalaureate internship at a Concordia Lutheran Middle School there. That’s when he taught himself Cantonese, which came in handy when he met Kiu. But the two may never have crossed paths, since California was not on Herb’s list of career destinations. “I had no interest in California at all,” he says. “I was a New Yorker.”

But, receiving a position announcement at CCI from his academic dean at Ann Arbor to respond to a position announcement from Christ College Irvine, Geisler interviewed and found himself on the phone with then- president Ray Halm receiving an offer to become a professor in the music department.

“I was shocked because I had no intention of taking that interview process seriously,” he remembers. “I thought, if it’s the Lord’s will, he’ll have me go there.”

So it was that Geisler moved west and began teaching and took on another important task for which he had been equipped during his time in Michigan: creating a teacher education program. Within four years, with Geisler in a key role, Concordia’s newly-launched music major became a significant part of its teacher education program.

Around that same time, in 1994, Herb and Kiu were married.

“I’m a very planned person,” says Kiu. I know when I want to do what, and my plan was to go back to Hong Kong to teach. But the Lord had a different plan.”

Herb continued directing the Concordia chapel choir and handbell groups and teaching music classes, in addition to building the music education program.

“I enjoyed everything I did,” he says. With handbells specifically, “We had fantastic experiences traveling and performing, and during my time there we grew from 18 ringers up to 60 ringers.”

That growth occasioned the hiring of music professor Nancy Jessup to help handle the workload. When Herb retired in 2017, his final project was directing Concert Handbells at the National Seminar of Handbell Musicians of America. He left a legacy at Concordia of a well-established music program and the raising up of gifted student musicians and composers such as Alex ’10 and Christian ’10 Guebert.

Kiu earned her California teaching credential at Concordia in 1999 while working in the Irvine Unified School District in various capacities for 10 years including library media teacher. She joined Concordia’s library staff in 2007, retiring in 2019 as the library office manager, handling the library’s budget and acquisitions. She earned her MBA in 2016 for personal growth.

“That was a very interesting and worthwhile experience,” she says of being in the classroom. “I received a very good education from Concordia. I had really good professors. I feel they really cared, and they were strong academically.” 

Upon retiring, the couple wanted to establish a trust so that one day the resources God had given them would support ministries and institutions important to them.

“Being a teacher myself, supporting education is always part of the priority, besides the church,” says Kiu. “I feel extremely blessed by what God has given us. We want to be good stewards.”

Herb says that while neither one came from material wealth, both were diligent managers of their resources — and godly stewardship always included giving.

“I took it for granted that that’s part of what we do,” says Herb, speaking of his parents’ example of generosity while he was growing up.

After searching for several years to find an estate attorney who understood their goals, the Geislers found a very helpful partner in Concordia’s Jonathan Howard who worked with the Financial Planning Ministry (FPM) to establish the Geislers’ living trust. The university’s new partnership with FPM makes the estate planning process simpler and easier than ever, says FPM employee Liz Pimentel ’10.

“FPM was very helpful,” says Herb. “If we had questions, we could talk to somebody about them. Jonathan is a very gifted person for this kind of task. He walks through it very tenderly and lovingly. He’s also a graduate of Concordia, so it’s in his heart, too.”

Kiu calls the process “very organized and easy to do.” The Geislers are glad to give to Concordia because the university “is blooming and a lot of good things are happening,” Herb says.

Having helped Concordia become what it is today, their support will help it continue into the future.