Audrey Geisel

Audrey Grace Florine Stone (August 14, 1921 – December 19, 2018) was the second wife of American children's book author Theodor Geisel ( Dr. Seuss), to whom she was married from 1968 until his death in 1991. She founded Dr. Seuss Enterprises in 1993, and was president and CEO of the company until her death in 2018.

Early life and education

Audrey Grace Florine Stone was the daughter of Norman Alfred Stone, an English medical furniture salesman, and Ruth Benson, a nurse whose family was from Norway. She was baptized at the Ravenswood Covenant Church in Chicago, Illinois, United States. She grew up in and around Queens, New York, moving around as often as an " army brat". Her parents' marriage was "off and on" and her father left early in her life. When she was five, her mother moved into a nurses' dormitory at the Manhattan Eye, Ear and Throat Hospital and sent her to live with a friend in New Rochelle, New York. However, her mother did visit her on weekends. At this time, the young Audrey attended Julia Richmond School, Manhattan.

Nursing career

Geisel studied nursing at Indiana University School of Nursing in Indianapolis, earning a Bachelor of Science in nursing in 1944. Of her university application, she said she knew she was supposed to say that she wanted to "serve humanity", but what she really wanted was "to be in the centre of the action."

She worked in Massachusetts and at the Coleman Obstetrical and Gynecological Hospital at the Indiana University Medical Center. Long after she finished working as a nurse, she continued renewing her credentials, refusing to "hang up the whites” officially.

Marriage to Edmunds Dimond

In 1945 she married fellow student Edmunds Grey Dimond. He became a resident physician at Indiana University Medical Center and later Dean of Cardiology at the University of Kansas. While the couple travelled to and lived in Japan and Netherlands for his work, where she took lessons in sculpture. They had two daughters, Lark Grey (b. 1953), a sculptor, and Leagrey, a bookstore owner. Of her role as a mother, she said, "I was the kind of mother I now regret ��But I don't live with regret, because what you see is what they got." After Audrey's death, her daughters disputed this self-description, saying they had developed a warm relationship with their mother. The family moved to La Jolla, San Diego, in 1960 for Dimond to join Scripps Clinic, while Geisel volunteered in cancer wards.

Marriage to Ted Geisel (a.k.a. Dr. Seuss)

Audrey met Seuss and his first wife, Helen Palmer, at a party in La Jolla. Of their first meeting she said, "As we went through the line, I noticed that when we got to Dr. Seuss, the inflection of the person introducing us was slightly different ��I thought, 'Well, it's for some reason.' Being my facetious best, I said, 'Dr. Seuss, you must have a very interesting specialty. The right or the left nostril?' And I remember him looking at me kind of startled and making no response." The two couples became friends and later Audrey and Theodor began an affair, about which she said, "The feeling was that at his age you grab for the gusto. You don't wait. You don't think you have that much time." Devastated by her husband's affair with Dimond, Palmer died by suicide on October 23, 1967. In May 1968 Seuss wrote to friends, "Audrey and I are going to be married ��I am acquiring two daughters, aged nine and fourteen. I am rebuilding the house to take care of the influx. I am 64 years old. I am marrying a woman seventeen years younger… I have not flipped my lid. This is not a sudden nutty decision… This is an inevitable, inescapable conclusion ��All I can ask you is to try to believe in me." Audrey divorced Edmunds Dimond on 21 June 1968.

After the legally required six-week wait, Geisel married Seuss on August 5, 1968, at the Washoe County Courthouse in Reno, Nevada. They invited no friends. They lived in a "Mount Soledad aerie" in La Jolla, where Seuss had previously lived with Palmer. It had an "old stucco observatory and elegant, helter-skelter maze of rooms they have built around it." When she moved in with Seuss, Geisel sent her daughters to boarding school of which she said "They wouldn't have been happy with Ted, and Ted wouldn't have been happy with them." Her daughters later disputed this statement and said that Seuss had been a warm and loving father. She also said "I've never been very maternal. There were too many other things I wanted to do. My life with him was what I wanted my life to be."
The couple travelled widely around the world, including Cambodia, India, France, United Kingdom, Kenya, Turkey, Greece, Italy, Spain, Portugal, Australia, New Zealand, Morocco, Israel, Lebanon, and many other countries and territories.

When Seuss started losing his sight to glaucoma in 1975, Geisel served as his "eyes and driver". Geisel took credit for Seuss's appearance, saying "I created the beard. He had a nose that was looking for a beard all his life." It was in part to make Seuss's life easier as he began to lose his sight. In 1989 Geisel was diagnosed with a benign brain tumour. It was successfully removed in January 1990. She nursed Seuss during his final illness. He died of cancer in 1991.

Springfield, MA

Geisel first visited Seuss' birthplace, Springfield, Massachusetts, soon after their wedding. In 1997 she initiated fundraising to create a Dr. Seuss National Memorial Sculpture Garden in the town, by donating $1m. The garden includes bronze sculptures created by Geisel's daughter, Lark Grey Dimond-Cates. Fifteen years later, with Geisel's approval, Springfield opened The Amazing World of Dr. Seuss Museum.

Working with Seuss

In her introduction to ''The Complete Cat in the Hat'' Geisel wrote about Seuss's writing process and how she was responsible for collecting "as many paperback thrillers as I could find, bring them home, stash them in a secret location and bring them out one at a time" when he was stuck for ideas and needed a break. Of her relationship with Seuss, she said, "The idea was to keep the body there so it could take that mind as far as it wanted to go. I kept the Band-Aids going."

Geisel was "credited with reinvigorating her husband's creative output". He published 20 books during their 25-year marriage, including ''The Lorax'', '' You're Only Old Once!'' and ''Oh, the Places You'll Go!''. She was proud of her contributions to Seuss's work. His editors at Random House told her "His juices were getting diluted, and he needed something to start him again."

She was also credited with "encouraging her husband to address more social issues" in his books, specifically ''The Lorax'' and the anti-war ''The Butter Battle Book''. When Seuss was stuck while trying to write a book about conservation issues, Geisel suggested a trip to Kenya to get his mind off his work. While there, Seuss saw a herd of elephants. Of the sight, he said he "grabbed a laundry list that I had beside me and wrote the whole book ''The Lorax'' in 45 minutes." On the same trip, Seuss saw people cutting down acacia trees, and "he thought, 'they can't cut down my Dr. Seuss trees' – which he renamed Truffula trees."

During an interview in 1986, Seuss noted that Geisel studied art and called her "the colour expert ��She always makes sure to tell me what's bad."
Geisel "accepted credit" for Seuss's change of colour palette for ''The Lorax''. Seuss also said Geisel was "the only adult who could read is storiesaloud."

After Seuss's death

In 1991, in response to the anti-abortion movement's adopting of a line from ''Horton Hears a Who!'' – "A person's a person no matter how small" – in support of its cause, Geisel stated she "doesn't like people to hijack Dr. Seuss characters or material to front their own points of view."

In the early 2000s Geisel dated Alexander Butterfield.

She received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame on behalf of Seuss in 2004.

Dr. Seuss Enterprises

Before Seuss died, Geisel had "the impression that I was going to be fairly involved in everything, ��it began to dawn on me that there was going to be a tremendous transition after his loss – I was going to do everything!" Seuss left behind "drawers, closets and files of unsorted, uncatalogued material".

To protect Seuss's name and copyrights, Dr. Seuss Enterprises was created in 1993. Geisel was President and CEO and would "hold court each morning with aides at a La Valencia Hotel's restaurant in San Diego ��arriving in a 1984 Cadillac with licence plate that said GRINCH." Geisel was the prima inter pares on the board of three directors.

Of her role, in 1994 she said, "My absolute desire, creed, intent is to carry forth from this day Ted's books, the sharing and ongoingness of those books, generation by generation, for all the reasons they were written in the first place. They're in our language." Of looking after Seuss's characters she said "You keep firm control as if they really were your children. I don't want the ''Cat in the Hat'' in a bad part of town, so to speak."

Soon after establishing Dr. Seuss Enterprises, Universal Pictures approached Geisel about creating a Seuss-inspired ride at the Universal Islands of Adventure, Florida. She refused, being "concerned the park would cheapen the image of Dr. Seuss." After many redesigns, Geisel finally gave her approval in 1995, retaining a lot of creative control during the production process of Seuss Landing.

In 1994, she signed a deal with Living Books, a joint venture between Broderbund Software and Random House, for the multimedia rights to Seuss's work.

By 1996, there was concern that Geisel had been over-saturating the market with too many Seuss-related products, with Brian Henson of Jim Henson Productions saying, "it is an unusual situation where there are different people working with the same characters on different sorts of projects all over the place. That makes it a little confusing." However, on one point Geisel was firm: "I don't want to go into the food business. I don't want one of our little people poking out from a box of Wheat Chex."

In 1996 Steven Spielberg secured the rights to ''The Cat in the Hat'' for a live-action film. However, in 1999 Geisel reclaimed the rights, saying, "They just couldn't get it right."

After an aborted deal with TriStar Pictures had been cleared up, "one of Hollywood's biggest-ever book auctions" took place in 1998, with Universal Pictures paying $5 million for the rights to ''How The Grinch Stole Christmas'' and up to $4 million for ''Oh, The Places You'll Go''. (As of 2020 it was slated for a 2027 release as part of Warner Bros.' new Seuss universe.) As part of the bidding process, which included Tom Shadyac, the Farrelly brothers, Gary Ross and John Hughes, each interested party needed to pay $3 million to secure a meeting with Geisel.

In 2004 she presided over ''Seusstennial: A Century of Imagination'' marking the centenary of Seuss's birth. In 2013 she "opened the Estate's vault" and allowed some of Seuss's hat collection to tour the States, as the ''Hats Off to Dr. Seuss'' exhibition. In 2015 she curated ''The Art of Dr. Seuss'', an exhibition of paintings and sculptures.

Books

Geisel was involved in the following Seuss-related publications:

Seuss dedicated the following books to Geisel and her daughters:
*''Fox in Socks'' (1965) – dedicated to "Mitzi Long and Audrey Dimond of the Mt. Soledad Lingual Laboratories"
*''The Cat in the Hat Songbook'' (1967) – dedicated to "Lark and Lea of Luddington Lane", Geisel's daughters
*'' I Can Lick 30 Tigers Today! and Other Stories'' (1969) – dedicated to Geisel.

Film and TV

Geisel was involved in the following in her role as CEO of Dr. Seuss Enterprises:

Theatre

*1998 – ''Dr. Seuss How the Grinch Stole Christmas''. Premiered at The Old Globe, San Diego. Geisel gifted them the rights, about which the former artistic director said, it was "a gift that has continued giving to our theatre and the community long after both of our individual departures." Geisel had a walk-on part in the 2006 production.
*1999 – Geisel attended workshops for ''Seussical: The Musical''. It premiered in 2000 in Boston. Of the production she said, "I was completely captivated."

Dr. Seuss Foundation

Geisel became president of the Dr. Seuss Foundation, which was established in 1958. A portion of all sales of Dr. Seuss books is donated to the Foundation which supports the arts, civic and public affairs, education, health, international relief, social services and religious welfare with a focus on California.

In 1993, together with Kellogg's Corporation, the Foundation donated 500,000 books to nearly 2,000 schools which served disadvantaged children. In 1998 Geisel waived royalties to ''How the Grinch Stole Christmas!'' and donated $100,000 from the Foundation to help cover the costs of free tickets for San Diego's children who would be unable to afford to pay otherwise.

Dr. Seuss Fund

The fund supported (and continues to support) dozens of charitable organisations in San Diego through the donation of "millions of dollars". Of her support of San Diego, she said, "I truly love this town. And I saw all the problems in the underbelly ��all the mental problems, poverty, sociological problems. Illiteracy." In 2000 she said, "I'm kind of the safety net under San Diego." Some of the causes she supported included:
*Center for Family Literacy
*Charter 100
*Ida Green Cancer Center
*March of Dimes
*La Jolla Playhouse
*Mental Health Association
* Mingei International Museum
*Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego
* Museum of Photographic Arts
*Old Globe Theatre
*Salk President's Club, founding donor
*San Diego Council on Literacy
*San Diego Museum of Art
*San Diego Opera
* San Diego Symphony
* San Diego Zoological Society
*Vista Hill
*Voices for Children

Through the Association for Library Service to Children (ALSC) the fund established the Theodor Seuss Geisel Award for the "most distinguished American book for beginning readers". In 2012 the Dartmouth Medical School was renamed the Geisel School of Medicine, to reflect the couple's generosity over many years.

Relationship with University of California, San Diego (UCSD)

Following Geisel's death, the Chancellor of UCSD said the university "would not be the same top-ranked research institution it is today without her enthusiastic generosity and vast university involvement." Geisel was involved in many aspects of the university's activities. Of her relationship with UCSD she said "I feel so much part of this university. I just do."

Geisel's support included:
*1992 – donating almost 20,000 "drawings, sketches, notebooks and other memorabilia dating from the 1970s to 1990s" to UCSD library with a value of $2.3 million
*1993 – she opened the Geisel Room in a wing of the University's library.

*1995 – gave $20 million, the single largest donation to UCSD, "believed to be the largest single donation ever made to any San Diego institution." The main library was renamed Geisel Library in recognition of the gift. Of the donation, Geisel said "The UCSD Library is so right for Ted. First, because literacy has always been our primary interest. If we could conquer illiteracy, many of the other causes we support to sustain people – the abused, the homeless, and the need for remedial education – would, to some extent, disappear. The library is the symbol of our commitment. And the UCSD Library is especially suited for that role. The first time Ted saw the form of that building he said to me 'If I had turned my thoughts toward designing a building, it might have looked strangely similar to this.
*2007 – donated $1 million to establish the ''Audrey Geisel University Librarianship''. The endowed position provides discretionary funding — in perpetuity — to continually enhance and expand the staff, resources and services of the library.

*2013 – donated $2 million for the renovation of the University House. It was renamed the ''Audrey Geisel University House'' in her honour
*2015 – donated $3 million to Geisel Library to renovate the library's interior

She also supported the Scripps Institution of Oceanography and Health Sciences, UCSD Sulpizio Cardiovascular Center and the Preuss School.

She was on the following USCD boards:
*Campaign for USCD, honorary co-chair
*University Librarian Advisory Board
*Board of Visitors of the School of Medicine
*Moores Cancer Center Board
*Women's Association of the Salk Institute for Biological Studies, founding member

Following her death, Scripps renamed the pavilion on its Torey Pines site the Geisel Pavilion. Geisel's La Jolla home was donated to UCSD. It was put up for sale in 2022 with the net proceeds put into a Geisel Fund.

Board memberships

*Chancellor's Associates Silver Circle
*Director's Circle
*Million Dollar Leadership Circle of Vista Hill
*National Hospice Foundation, founding trustee
*Old Globe Theatre, honorary director
*San Diego Council on Literacy, board member
*San Diego History Society, Curator's Circle

Awards, honours and nominations

Geisel received the following:

Geisel created the following awards and positions:
*''Audrey Geisel Friend of Military Children'' award
*''Audrey Geisel Endowed Chair in Innovation'', Indiana University School of Nursing
*''Audrey Geisel University Librarian''
*''Audrey Geisel Chair in Biomedical Sciences'', Salk Institute for Biological Studies
*''Audrey Geisel Cancer Foundation''
*''Audrey S Geisel Managing Director'', The Old Globe Theatre, San Diego

See also

*''Dr. Seuss and Mr Geisel: A Biography'' (1995) Morgan, J. and Morgan N. Pub. Da Capo Press.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Geisel, Audrey Stone
1921 births
2018 deaths
20th-century American businesswomen
20th-century American businesspeople
20th-century American philanthropists
20th-century American women philanthropists
21st-century American women philanthropists
21st-century American philanthropists
21st-century American businesswomen
21st-century American businesspeople
Philanthropists from Chicago
Indiana University Indianapolis alumni
American patrons of literature
University of California, San Diego people
American nurses
American people of English descent
American people of Norwegian descent
People from La Jolla, San Diego
American patrons of the arts
American women business executives