Miss Geraldine Cully 1921-2005

Assistant Secretary of the Marshall Aid Commemoration Commission 1961-1986

Miss Cully was a much loved member of the Marshall family. Born in 1921 she was educated at Kingsdene Private School and Westfield Secretarial College. She worked as a Secretary in the United Kingdom from 1938 until 1939 and during the War was involved in ARP, firewatching and Red Cross work. In 1946 she emigrated to Canada returning in 1953 to look after her father. She held various posts at the United States Educational Commission (Fulbright) before starting at the Association of Universities of the British Commonwealth now ACU. She was awarded an MBE in 1970 for her services to the Marshall Scholars and remained working for the Marshall Commission until she retired in 1986.

Miss Cully will be remembered for commitment to the Marshall Scholars and the care that she took of each one. The current Marshall Commission is considering how best to create a lasting memorial to Miss Cully.

The following are tributes from Marshall Scholars:

• Sad news indeed. I have such fond memories of her shepherding the '61 Marshall Scholars from the Queen Mary to London (and beyond).
• It is truly sad, especially for those of us for whom the Marshall Scholarship was Miss Cully. I cannot tell you how much she meant to us. She personified the bonds that we have to the program and to each other.
• We will all miss her wonderful letters and lively interest in everything we did.
• She was a GREAT lady! Her many kindnesses to my wife and me during our time in England so many years ago will always be remembered.
• Geraldine Cully will be missed by those she served.
• I shall always remember, gratefully, Miss Cully's sheperding of our group in London, September 1980, and her motherly care for us during our tenure as scholars.
• Miss Cully made an enormous impact on the lives of hundreds of Marshall Scholars. She is sadly missed.
• Miss Cully was the Marshall Program for me once I got to England. She couldn't have been more helpful and warm, traits enormously treasured by a young American girl.
• She was like a mother to so many of us and was the face of the Commission for so many of the earlier Marshall Scholars. She deserves so much credit for making the program what it has become.
• She was a jewel of a person, and made our stay there so much more easy and enjoyable. She will be missed.
• For twenty five years "Miss Cully" was the Marshall Scholarships: she shaped her scholars by nurturing and nagging, by spotting talent and promoting it, by discreet kindnesses, and wise discipline when called for. Despite her petite stature, her sparkling eyes and slightly maiden-auntish affect, Miss Cully ruled her brood with firm kindness and shrewd insight and helped us forge the bonds that have kept us united as Marshalls all these years later.
• Miss Cully was a major figure in my life, and I had nothing but respect for her competency and compassion. She represented the best of Britain to me for 30 years.
• Miss Cully was a wonderful friend, and I feel privileged to have known her.
• I got to know Geraldine Cully at breakfast in the hotel our first day in London during our orientation as Marshall Scholars. I tried to jam my spoon into a Wheatabix, which leapt from my bowl and landed in Geraldine's lap. I was completely mortified, but she demurely set the Wheatabix back on the table with a smile and said, "Yes, dear they can be quite lively, can't they." As you might imagine, this endeared her to me forever. Some months later, I had to travel to London to ask her for several favors. Someone had brought her roses, which were drooping terribly in their vase. One of my housemates was a concert pianist who had taught me that one way of revising roses was to submerge the stems in boiling water for a minute. I suggested this to Geraldine, who was horrified. "That seems utterly brutal!" she said. "I could never do such a thing to a rose." Abashed, I returned to Norwich thinking I would never be granted what I'd asked. But Geraldine called the next day to exclaim that she had given in to my suggestion, stuck her roses in boiling water and come in that morning to find the bouquet standing bolt upright. The favors soon followed. She was like no one I'd ever met and she comes to me surprisingly often in my memories of that time 27 years ago.
• Miss Cully was unfailingly personable and efficient. She took a lively interest in individual scholars (and their spouses), and in their pursuits. I remember her with much affection, am saddened to hear of her passing, and am lastingly grateful for her splendid work.
• Mr Foster and Miss Cully made the perfect team for young scholars -- a touch of fatherly firmness with heaps of motherly love, guiding young Americans as they climbed academic ladders and savoured England in the turbulent 60s. Foster and Cully will be remembered fondly through the end of our days
• Speaking for all 1969 Marshall Scholars, I'm requesting that you convey to her family how much we all loved Miss Cully and appreciated her work.
• A young American needed no better introduction to the virtues of the English than Geraldine Cully. Weren't we so lucky? As a Scholar, I provided Geraldine will a range of small and large problems, including a potential deportation, and she handled them all with grace, understatement and modest confidence. I came back to live in England, so I can say now with experience that she was one in 65 million. Thank you, Geraldine.
• It has been a long time since I was a Marshall Scholar, but I still vividly remember Miss Cully with great fondness and appreciation.
• I was lucky enough to live near Gordon Square and was able to stop by on occasion (usually without warning) to visit with Miss Cully (and Allison Hawke and Sally Shelley who worked with her) and she was always warm and welcoming and I always enjoyed chatting with her. In retrospect, shepherding a group of bright but intense students through their first extended stays abroad should, by all rights, have been a very difficult job. She handled it with such skill and grace, however, that it seemed effortless.
• I am deeply saddened to hear of Miss Cully's passing. She was such a warm and generous lady who befriended and cared for so many Marshall Scholars. She personified everything special about the Marshall Scholar Program: friendship, dedication, and commitment to excellence. We are so much the worse for her absence.
• Geraldine Cully was a remarkable lady whom I will never forget. She was compassionate, oh yes firm, a great story teller :why the Scholars no longer took the Queen Mary (was it the Queen Mary) to England, what it was like carrying a parrot through the streets of London, and more. With London all around me I could sit in her office for hours to talk. I will miss her and feel lucky to have been a Scholar under her guidance.
• Miss Cully's trick was to make that which was good for you apparently good to you as well. She disapproved of changing research topics, motorcycles, first year Marshall scholars who lived in apartments, and much, much more -- in the abstract. In practice, she welcomed most of it. I remember her saying "Why do you wheedle so?" as she prepared to change her mind. I liked her enormously.
• Thank you for forwarding to us all the sad message about Geraldine's death. She was all the message noted and more to all of us. Indeed, when I think "Marshall Scholarship," it is her name and face and her patient concern for us that comes first to mind.

If you would like to add a tribute or have any photographs of Miss Cully please email:MACC@marshallscholarship.org