Alvin J. Geske

Alvin J. Geske of Kensington, Maryland, died on March 15 in Kensington of pulmonary fibrosis. He was a longtime resident of the Kensington area and practiced law in Washington, D. C. since the early 1970s.

Mr. Geske was born April 17, 1942, in Whitefish to Alvin E. Geske and Ada Jay (Best) Geske. He graduated from Whitefish High School in 1960 as salutatorian and a member of the school’s 1960 state interscholastic golf team.

He was received a Great Northern Scholarship awarded to outstanding students who were children of employees of the Great Northern Railroad, now part of BNSF Railway. He kept up with many of his high school classmates at reunions.

He was a 1964 summa cum laude graduate of Southern Methodist University with a bachelor of arts degree in economics, where he was elected to Phi Beta Kappa in his junior year and received the Phi Beta Kappa research award and departmental distinction.

In 1967, he was awarded a JD degree with honors from the University of Chicago Law School, where he served on the staff of the Law Review and was a member of the Phi Delta Phi legal fraternity. He also received an LLM degree in taxation with high honors from George Washington University Law School in 1974.

He served in the U.S. Army from 1968 to 1970.

He was admitted to practice law in Texas and the District of Columbia. Although he briefly practiced law in Texas early in his career, the largest part of his career was spent in Washington, D.C.

He was an attorney and assistant branch chief with the Legislation and Regulations Division, Office of Chief Counsel, Internal Revenue Service, from 1970 to 1974, where his principal activities were participating in the development of regulations under the Tax Reform Act of 1969 and regulations under various controversial income tax accounting rules. From 1975 through early 1981, he was a legislation attorney with the Joint Committee on Taxation in Congress, where he worked on tax legislation, including the Tax Reform Act of 1976, the Revenue Act of 1978, and the Energy Tax of 1978.

From early 1981 to his retirement in 2011, he was in the private practice of law in Washington, D.C. with a number of small firms and, since 1993, with Holland & Knight, LLP. He served as chair of the Committee on Agriculture of the Section of Taxation, American Bar Association in 1986 and wrote many articles on various aspects of tax law during his career.

Mr. Geske was active in various civic associations and related groups. He was the president of the Rock Creek Palisades Citizens Association from 1997 through 2007 and served as a representative of RCPCA to the Montgomery County Civic Federation, the Coalition of Kensington Communities, and the Allied Civic Group.

He was a member of Hughes United Methodist Church in Wheaton, where he served on the Audit and Finance Committees.

He was preceded in death by his father and mother, Alvin E. and Ada J. (Best) Geske, former residents of Whitefish, and his sister and brother-in-law, Laura and James Gray.

He is survived by his wife of 46 years, Cheryl Geske of Kensington; and his sons, Daniel of Kensington, and David of Silver Spring, Maryland.

He was devoted to this family. He greatly enjoyed activities with his family, particularly attending Daniel’s drama performances and sporting events, and vacations in the Glacier Park area.

For over 30 years, he participated directly in swimming therapy for David and group adaptive swim every Saturday at the local YMCA. He and his wife were a team, working to help David live with his many disabilities while advocating and supporting legislative efforts to improve the lives of individuals with disabilities.

Mr. Geske has requested that any material expressions of sympathy be sent as donations in his name to The Maryland School for the Blind, 3501 Taylor Avenue, Baltimore, MD 21256.