As the daughter of Geist Community Newsletter publisher Tom Britt and his wife, Jeanne, Stefanie Turk remembers the very first issue of the newsletter.
“I was about 14 when my step-dad announced, ‘I have this great idea!’ and then all of us sitting around a table helping to put out the first issue,” she said. “I think we stapled pieces of paper together — it certainly wasn’t a magazine at the time like it is now. But from the start, the concept has always been community-focused.”
She laughed as she talked about having parents so well-known and connected in the Geist Reservoir community.
“My dad knows everybody, and whenever we go out to dinner, it never fails — people would stop and talk to him. He’s such a people person and such a caring person, and it’s been cool to see all his involvement. It’s totally his element.”
Turk added that while her dad is the face of the now-nine monthly magazines, he’s only half the business. Her mom is the other, behind-the-scenes business half.
“I’m very proud of both of them,” she said. “My siblings and I have seen firsthand how tirelessly they work, pretty much every day of the week.”
Turk, who works in marketing and owns her own photography business, said her hands-on involvement with the newsletter over the years, taking photos for stories and helping her mom in the business office, plus just observing the hard work it takes to be successful, has been an invaluable education for her own career.
“I’ve learned so much about so many things, and I’ve been inspired a lot by what I’ve grown up around,” she said. “I’ve watched this thing that they’ve created grow and grow and prosper and the pace they keep and how they keep reaching out to new people. It’s really impressive and definitely admirable.”
