November 17, 1940 – April 30, 2006

Frances was born in Rutland, raised in Springfield, and after high school attended Mt. Ida College in Newton, MA.  Upon graduation she moved to nearby Boston and worked at the Joslin Diabetes Center and Research Institute, and then at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Library – where she met her husband, Peter Gessner, an industrial consultant from the Cologne area of Germany who was spending a year of study at MIT.  As Peter recounted, one morning in April of 1967, at 8:55 a.m., he was standing outside the library door, waiting for the library to open. Five minutes later “A beautiful woman in a red dress came to open the door” – and the rest, as they say, is history. The course of both lives changed forever.

Peter had planned to be on his way to Mexico and Brazil; Fran was happily ensconced in Boston, with family close by in Vermont. They married in Springfield on June 15, 1968, and the initial plan was to stay in the United States. But a few months later they were in Germany, because the untimely death of Peter’s father left a family business leaderless, and his responsibility.

So here was Frances, in a new country, speaking not a word of German – and Peter, in charge of a company that made large scale specialized equipment for the chemical and nuclear industries, just as the risks of climate change and production of nuclear energy were coming to the fore. How to keep the company going, and the employees “employed.” How to get along when you don’t know the terrain and can’t speak the language?   Not an easy path for either, but one they travelled together with courage and success. 

Fran and Peter had two children: Petra, now editor in chief of an economics journal; and Scott, who became the German national tennis champion and a tennis pro, and then started his own advertising business. There are five grandchildren: Selma and Jule Gerz, and Glen, Jamie, and Miles Quast-Gessner, the youngest of whom Frances never got to meet. 

Frances truly led a remarkable life!  Reading children’s books to Petra and Scott helped her learn German. She studied the language, became increasingly fluent, and gave English lessons to fellow Germans.  She became a full member of her community and was known for hosting annual holiday open-houses, and for introducing “American sandwiches” to her German friends. When the children were older, she joined Peter in the company and took charge of the accounting department.  She became an accomplished golfer and tennis player.  She competed in a triathlon. Her creativity shone through her artwork and cooking and in the way she helped design and then decorate the house they built. She loved music. She loved to travel, and she and Peter travelled widely: throughout Europe, the US and Canada, and to Australia and New Zealand, Chile, Brazil, Argentina, and South Africa.  Fran’s adaptation to Germany was matched by Peter’s knowledge and understanding of American culture and politics – plus his undying love of the Red Sox! 

Springfield and Boston were locked in their hearts.  Frances and Peter kept up family contacts and friendships in the US, especially visiting her mother and other relatives in Springfield and Rutland and timing visits so she and Peter could attend reunions whenever possible. Their last trip, in 2004/5 was especially important, to see her mother, who was failing at the same time that Frances was struggling with brain cancer. 

Frances was courageous in facing down the cancer that cut her life short.  An understatement to say that she is sorely missed!  She adored her family, and they adored her. In Peter’s words, she was “very active, athletic, adventurous, curious, never still. She was accomplished. She was brave. She was loving. She was a wonderful wife and mother. She had a happy life!” 

Frances’s friend Diane Tabor supplied this remembrance of Fran.

Photo cropped from a picture taken at Crown Point CC in June 1998.