VIRGINIA TEGTMEYER

TEGTMEYER--Virginia Lee ("Geelee"). Virginia Lee ("Geelee") Tegtmeyer died peacefully October 25, 2024 in Charlottesville, VA from pneumonia at the age of 83. She was born June 6, 1941 in New York City to Christopher J. Peters and Virginia I. (Hoelzer) Peters. Preceded in death by her parents and her former husband, Charles J. Tegtmeyer, MD, she is survived by her husband, Robert W. O'Connell, sisters Debbie Peters and Penny Oring, brother Christopher Peters, step-son Robert Tharp, and their families. She attended Northfield Mount Hermon School, Western Reserve University, and George Washington University, and obtained her PhD in psychology from the University of Virginia in 1980. Geelee taught biology for several years at the National Cathedral School in Washington DC and was later a counselor for the Albemarle (Virginia) County Schools. She was a social and intellectual mainstay in the interventional radiology program at the UVa Medical Center established by her former husband. She had no children of her own, but she was a surrogate mother or mentor to a score of young men and women, from friends' children, to graduate students, to medical fellows, to UVa football players. She had a wide range of interests, including astronomy and fishing, and for years ran Bass Hollow, a mail-order fishing tackle company. In retirement, she was a patron of opera (her special passion) and the arts. Geelee was a lovely, vivacious, compassionate woman -- loving and generous, bright and extroverted, and remarkably resilient. She was a force for good -- admired and loved by a wide circle of friends and acquaintances. Geelee requested that the family hold no memorial service for her.