Deborah Moore Geithner

Geithner, Deborah Moore

Deborah Moore Geithner, daughter of Orleans and music-maker and teacher, after seeing her children wax strong with families of their own and forging relationships around the world, died peacefully at her home on August 12, twenty months after first being diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, and in the town where she spent a lifetime of summers and had made her final community. She was 76.

Born to the former Orleans Selectman and Nicholas Snow-descendant, Charles F. Moore, Jr., and Adeline Nichols Moore, a painter and Friend of the Snow Library, Mrs. Geithner began studying piano at age six in Wayland, Mass., and sang in choruses at Kingswood School Cranbrook, a private secondary school in Bloomfield Hills, Mich., and also Smith College, where she majored in religion and graduated in 1960. Later that year, she married Peter F. Geithner, a Dartmouth classmate of her older brother Jonathan's, former Navy flyer and graduate of the Johns Hopkins School for Advanced International Studies. Together briefly in New York, Mrs. Geithner and Mr. Geithner soon joined in adventures in Africa, India, Thailand, and China as well as Washington and again in New York while Mr. Geithner served first with the U.S. Agency for International Development and then for 28 years with the Ford Foundation. Mr. Geithner and the four children they raised together - Timothy, Sarah, Jonathan and David, all survive her.

A student of French at Smith, Mrs. Geithner insisted on studying Hindi, Thai and Chinese when stationed with her husband in New Delhi, Bangkok and Beijing. Between her family's stints in India and Thailand, she resumed intensive study of the piano under a handful of teachers, settling ultimately with the late Alex Petruska, beloved and renowned instructor from Julliard. Mrs. Geithner gave major recitals in New York at the Weill Recital Hall, in Larchmont, N.Y., and in Orleans, performing with mastery and originality many of the most demanding works of the piano repertoire, among them Bach's Goldberg Variations and Beethoven's Sonata No. 23 (the "Appassionata").

Along with her own intensive study, Mrs. Geithner also took up the instruction of countless piano students of her own, and of all ages. The verve of Mrs. Geithner's performing and teaching if anything increased after her and Mr. Geithner's retirement to Orleans in 2004, where - on property just south of the Tonset Road cottage she had shared with her siblings and that overlooks the Orleans Town Cove - they built a new, neighboring house containing a bright and spacious, main room that would afford the inclusion of a second Steinway for Mrs. Geithner, optimizing her lessons and importantly allowing the performance of piano duets. Nor truly was her pace much detectably diminished after Mrs. Geithner's diagnosis of pancreatic cancer in December of 2012, a fact she faced with a defiant integrity, resolve and search for meaning. Throughout her time on the Cape, she rarely varied in the counting of a veritable rosary of music-centered rituals - from performing benefits in her home for the First Parish of Brewster, to serving on the Board of the annual August Cape Cod Chamber Music Festival, to playing in the Cove House Chamber Players, a trio she instituted with two other local musicians - the cellist, Lisa Gross and clarinetist, Monica Woods.

In addition to her husband and children, Mrs. Geithner is also survived by her siblings, Jonathan and Benjamin Moore and Lydia Moore DuPertuis, and nine grandchildren, Elise, Peter, Benjamin, Clare, Kaiya, Caroline, Lincoln, Piya and Malee.

Lovely, lean and willowy, Mrs. Geithner became legendary in her years abroad and in the U.S. for surpassing the presumed highest universal benchmarks for numbers of friendships both struck up and retained, was beloved for the sound of joy for others that could be heard in her voice when around them, and not least for a salty (when not precisely profane) sense of humor. Her brother Benjamin's son Brendan, who had visited with Mrs. Geithner days before her death, wrote in a recent e-mail, "Deborah will be missed greatly, but I also believe her personality, wisdom and all-around sass are now rubbing off on a much larger scale. As my mother always says, someone is not truly gone as long as their memories exist in those that are still around to share them. Miss her so."