1952

Yogi Berra said, "When you get to a fork in the road, take it." Confounding Frost, Leslie M. Geller has taken Yogi's advice. Half way through a very successful legal career doing most of the legal work for Levitt of Levittown, with his 50th birthday approaching, Les decided that he really wanted to teach law. He took a fulltime position with the University of Delaware and loved it. But he found himself lonely with his family up in New Jersey, so he began writing. The experience not only cured the blues but liberated him, made his spirit burst forth.

Since then, Les has always worked on more than one book at once. North Cape andOther Poems, named for the northern-most part of Norway, was the first to reach print and was nominated to the Pulitzer Prize competition in 1983. Following immediately was a volume on zoning and planning entitled Strategy Zoning.

His Dartmouth experience led him to writing. He wrote for the English honors program and won the Honors prize. He marks a threeday visit with Robert Frost as an epiphanal time. "I was amazed and charmed. His wisdom was phenomenal. I only began realizing his impact years later."

The talent burst forth in may forms. There is a series of variations on Frost poems which resides in the Frost library at Baker. There is a book of law for home owners, a mysterious biography of a 20th-century woman, and a book on cautionary contracts for lay readers. He has written playlets, epigrams, a wish book for elders, and Choices, a second book of poetry which is simpler in form and deeper in content. There are also what he calls in-between books.

Les and his wife, Phyllis, spend most of their time at home, writing, thinking and enjoying life. They often visit their children Marcia, Robert, and Lori who live near by in New York City, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania. There is one grandson and another on the way. Les has to protect his lifestyle. "The more you retreat, the more die world goes after you."

A bad illness was another turning point. Now there is a sense of immediacy: a need "to say my piece before I go to my peace." He has fun. "I work tenaciously and I am becoming more productive. I have eight or nine books now in the making: poetry books, law books and in-between books." We commit too soon And then We sin to uncommit. Are we so afraid We'll be too late? Why, When there's no Arriving? —Leslie M. Geller, from "We Commit TooSoon," 1993

10 Grove Street, Pittsford, NY 14534