Geoff was born in Our Lady Of Lords hospital in Camden, New Jersey, on May 28, 1955, to Hubert and Pauline Dills, with older brother Mike already on the scene.
For a little background on the family, here is Hubert’s Autobiography.
The exact details of childhood are fuzzy, but are recollected by Mike:
The family was living in Wilmington DE at the time Geoff was born, after moving to Delaware a year before. Mom wanted to use the same doctor that delivered me.
When Geoff was about 3 or 4 we moved to Cleveland Ohio from Delaware. Dad was a mechanical engineer in the construction division of Dupont. When they commissioned a project from a vendor he would oversee the project which would entail moving to the vendors until the project was completed so we moved frequently. We were only in Cleveland for 9 months when Dad was tasked with overseeing the construction of a reactor being built in the San Francisco area. We lived in the east bay in San Leandro. Compared to the east, California was like another world. We could actually wear blue jeans to school which wasn’t permitted back east. Also every classroom had a door to the outside and the state mandated 5 recesses a day. It was nirvana. We learned how to play tetherball in California.
A couple of things I remember from California. Our dad was 6’6″ which was extremely tall back then. I think he was the tallest person I’d ever seen until I went to a basketball game. The weather out west was so good that the only time we were in the house was to eat or sleep. One evening some bullies came through the hood. Geoff and I were in the front yard playing catch and the bullies started hassling us. One of the bullies pushed Geoff to the ground and he started crying. Our dad heard the commotion from inside the house so he stepped out on the porch . He didn’t have to say a word. The bullies never returned.
Another event that I recall is mom kept bugging Geoff to tell her his teachers name. Every day she would ask and he would say he forgot. Well the problem was she had a Spanish accent and he couldn’t pronounce her name. He finally felt so much pressure that he asked the teacher to help him say it. On the walk home he was so determined to remember her name the he said it over and over on the walk. Her name was something like Mrs fon ho secca phonetically. He cracked mom up cause he said over and over until he met her at the door.
Another advantage to living in California is that we got to take actual vacations. Both our parents were from Charleston West Virginia so all of our relatives were there. So every chance our parents had we would go there including all summer when school was out. While all our friends were doing fun vacations we were off to WV. California was too far to drive and flying wasn’t as ubiquitous as it is now. Because we knew our stay was limited we saw more of California than our friends that had been born there.
After two years in California, Dad was assigned a project in Buffalo New York. The ultimate contrast. It only takes two words to describe Buffalo: cold and snow. When it got cold enough, we turned the back yard into a hockey rink and played with neighborhood kids all day.
A couple of things I remember about Buffalo. It’s where Geoff first got into television and the time he saved my life. Geoff was selected to be a participant on a local show similar to Romper Room. The whole neighborhood congregated in our living room to watch the show. He was definitely a local celebrity.
Behind our house was a new housing project. During the winter the newly constructed cinder block foundations were completed. At the end of the day, the neighborhood kids would go there and dive into the snow filled foundations. As I was jumping in, my hood happened to catch on a piece of rebar that was sticking up. I was hanging in mid air and couldn’t get down. Geoff wasn’t big enough to be able to lift me off the rebar so he ran to the closest house and got an adult who was home. I was pretty close to being asphyxiated before I was rescued.
At this point we were about 11 and 8 and after two years in Buffalo dad was once again sent to Wilmington headquarters. After about 2 years there he accepted a position in Dordrecht in the Netherlands. I was thirteen at the time and Geoff was 10. This was really life changing. Not only were we going to a place where we didn’t know anybody, it was a place where we didn’t even know the language. As enticement to get people to go, the company provided first class travel on an ocean liner. We went on the SS Rotterdam. It was fun, but there weren’t any other kids in the first class section and we had to wear tuxedos to all meals.
Living overseas was life changing for Geoff and I. We went to English speaking schools that had students from many countries. It made us realize how similar people everywhere are. They want the same things. It really helps wash away any cultural bias you might have. By the time Geoff went to college he had lived outside the US longer than he lived in the US. He lived in The Netherlands, Luxembourg and Germany. He and I reunited again at Marshall University where he began his interest in journalism. He became the editor of the school paper The Parthenon which launched his career in journalism.
