QPS Educator & Staff Spotlight: Dr. George Meyer

Founding committee member of the Quincy Public Schools Foundation
QPS Foundation Trustee Emeritus
First Co-Chair of the QPS Foundation Annual Campaign
QPS Foundation Dream Big Award Winner, 2016
QPS Math and PE Teacher, Coach, Personnel Director, and Superintendent
Quincy University Professor and Dean of the School of Education

In this extended Alumni Spotlight, George shares highlights from his life. This article is written in his own words from an interview conducted on February 11, 2026.

George’s Early Life

I grew up in East St. Louis, Illinois. I went to a Catholic high school that is now a prison. When you go from St. Louis to Mt. Vernon on I-64, the strip club is on your left, and if you look to the right, that is my old high school. It now has a large barbed-wire fence around it. East St. Louis is known for having some rough areas, but where I grew up wasn’t too bad.

My dad was originally from Carlyle, Illinois, but he came to East St. Louis right out of high school to work on the railroad. My mom was raised in East St. Louis in a subdivision that my grandfather built. So, many occupants in the subdivision were family members and relatives.

After suffering a back injury while working for the railroad, my dad opened a Clover Farm Grocery Store that he owned for many years. I worked there and delivered groceries for him. I even got my driver’s license at 14 so I could make the deliveries.

Neither of my parents went to college, so they thought it was important that I go. My freshman year of college, I attended St. Louis University. My high school basketball coach thought I would get a scholarship to either St. Joseph’s or Rockhurst, but both fell through, so I ended up at St. Louis University right across the river from my home in East St. Louis.

I tried out for basketball at St. Louis University and made it to the final cut. The coach told me he had too many scholarship kids to keep, so he couldn’t keep me. After that, the following summer, my mom said we were going up to visit Quincy College. I had never heard of it, but she had a friend whose son went there and spoke very highly of it. That’s what brought me to Quincy College, but what kept me there for the remainder of my undergraduate degree was the amazing financial support. I went out for the Quincy college basketball team and made it. After the first semester, they gave me a partial scholarship and asked me to play baseball. They also gave me a job in the cafeteria that covered the expense of my meal plan. Finally, they set me up with government loans to pay for all additional college fees. The loans were forgiven at a rate of 15% per year for each year I went on to teach at a low income school. Ultimately, my parents and I did not have to pay for any of my education at Quincy College beyond the expense of my first semester.

Mostly, I think my mom encouraged me to go to Quincy College because she wanted to get me out of town. She was afraid I was going to get married to the girl I had been dating since my junior year in high school. However, I ended up meeting my wife at Quincy College and forgot all about the girl back home.

Meeting Mary Nell

My wife, Mary Nell, was also an education major at Quincy College. I knew of her from a psychology class. I hadn’t officially met her, but I knew I wanted to. I attended a “Townie Party” (a party thrown by a student who attended Quincy College and was also a resident of Quincy). Mary Nell was at the party too. She told me later that she went there to meet my roommate, but he didn’t show up. Lucky for me! She lived in Stillwell Hall, which is now the Quincy Museum (16th and Maine Street). I walked her home from that party.

Mary Nell was from Hannibal and her dad ran Mark Twain Produce Company. We got married in Hannibal, the summer after we graduated from college, on August 24, 1963. Her maiden name was Frier; so, she was a Frier Meyer.

Math and PE at Junior High

Mary Nell and I both got jobs as teachers at Quincy Junior High School. We actually lived on checks given to us as wedding gifts until we got our first paychecks from Quincy Public Schools in late September.

As mentioned, I majored in Physical Education and Health, and had a minor in math. The minor in math is what got me a job at Quincy Junior High. I student-taught there, and they were in need of a teacher for two periods of math. In my first year, I taught two math periods and three physical education periods. I changed clothes off and on throughout the day, going from teacher attire to PE clothes. As a result, my clothes wore out quickly!

I always wanted to be a PE teacher and a coach, and I did end up coaching basketball at junior high. I hold the record at junior high for the most consecutive victories, which will probably never be broken. We won 44 games in a row, two and a half seasons’ worth. Seeing as though there was no state tournament, my teams didn’t have to play the best teams in the state. For the record to be broken, a team would have to win state 2-3 years in a row.

Making the Move to Administration

“When I graduated from college, I told people I was never going back to school ever again.”

I quickly changed my mind about school when I figured out how the salary schedule worked. I kept going to school for what felt like forever. I got my master’s degree from Northeast Missouri State (now Truman State University) in 1968, and then my doctorate at the University of Missouri in 1972.

After I got my master’s in physical education and health, I enrolled in a doctorate in physical education and administration at the University of Missouri. As soon as I started, I was taking classes on muscle building and learning about the body. I quickly recognized this was not the right program for me, and I switched to a purely school administration course of study.

My doctoral advisor was the head of the North Central Association, which governs all the high schools in Missouri, and he was head of the education department at Mizzou. He helped to lay out my doctoral plan. With his expertise and connections to the Missouri public schools, he was able to shepherd me through the doctoral process with no hiccups. One day while walking to lunch together, my advisor commented that, “It would be interesting if someone did a study of beginning teacher induction programs and beginning teacher morale.” In my mind I thought, “That’s what I am going to do.”

I went to school at night, and in the summers, and then I took a sabbatical in 1970 and 1971 to finish my doctorate. I actually got paid more on a sabbatical than I did teaching. The assistant superintendent at the time, who also got his doctorate at Mizzou, had gotten to know me through his son who student-taught under me. After getting to know me, he encouraged me and helped pave the path for the sabbatical that allowed me to finish my doctorate. Mary Nell and I ended up taking off a summer, a school year, and another summer for the sabbatical. While finishing up my schooling, we were also raising our first born son, Tim, who was a toddler.

After finishing my doctoral degree, I still wanted to be an athletic director, given my background in coaching and sports, but an assistant principal position opened at Quincy Senior High, and I took the job. I started this position in 1972 at Senior High 1 (when Quincy Senior High was in two different locations, with Senior High 1 being 9th and 10th grade).

I had done a lot of work in the area of personnel for my doctorate and was certified to interview teachers for jobs. At the time, there was an interview process that was developed by The Teacher Perceiver company. This interview technique consisted of a series of questions that had right and wrong answers. The company worked with a variety of school districts across the country to develop this process. They began by interviewing the best teachers in the district and then interviewing teachers who were not of the same caliber; looking to identify the differences in their answers. The most commonly provided answers given by the best teachers were used to develop the “right” answers.

It was a total of 60 questions, and if you got 30 right; you were considered qualified. The entire interview process took about an hour. When the right answer was given, the interviewer was to try to cut off the interviewee and move on to the next question to keep the process flowing. I had one teacher who could talk so fast that I was unable to cut her off. She was giving all the right answers, but I couldn’t get a word in. I stopped her after 30 questions and said, “You’re hired!”

In 1980, I became assistant superintendent for personnel and curriculum. I kept that job until I became superintendent in 1993. I stayed in that position until 1997, when I was eligible to retire.

The Beginnings of the QPS Foundation

In 1988, I was assistant superintendent, and two board members said they wanted to start a foundation for Quincy Public Schools. They each put in $10,000 and formed a committee representing the school district. I was on the committee and worked to get the people in place. We hired an executive director after some time. At first, it was a tough sell because people often aren’t as motivated to give to a tax supported organization.

Dr. George Crickard and I ran the first fundraising campaign. It was successful, with nearly 95% of the donations coming from people in Quincy. At the time, the foundation did not have contacts with alumni that lived outside of the area. As a board member, I encouraged the foundation to reach out to alumni and develop an alumni database. It took some time, but the database has really grown.There are now more than 30,000 alumni in it. Obtaining the contact info and creating an alumni network is what really helped the foundation grow.

Finding the Win-Win Model

According to Stephen Covey’s 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, “You only need one person to think win-win.” QPS had a strike under the previous superintendent three years before I took over. We were coming up for negotiations again and I decided we were not going to use adversarial bargaining. This process had been used in the past and resulted in a lot of back and forth arguing. As negotiations neared, I started looking for a different model.

The vice president of John Wood Community College at the time told me about a bargaining model used at a hospital in Kentucky by his sister. I reached out to his sister, and she put me in touch with a federal negotiator from their area. He told me about the non-adversarial bargaining process, and I really liked what I was hearing. I approached the board and asked if they would try this method. They voted four to three no, stating, “You have the same union leadership as during the last negotiations, and it’s just not going to work.”

The president of the board of education really liked the non-adversarial approach, and so he worked with one member on the board and managed to get her to change her mind. She told me, “I’m changing my mind and voting for it, but you are going to be fired.” I felt so strongly about the new approach that I replied, “I would rather be fired than do confrontational bargaining.”

I went to the teachers and explained non-adversarial bargaining, and they too didn’t think it would work because we had the same board members as last time. I called the federal mediator to ask what I should do, and he said, “Send them to Gary, Indiana. Their union had seven strikes in a row until they used this method.” After conferring with the superintendent of Gary, Indiana schools and learning he liked the process, I went back to the union leadership and asked them if I paid their way, would they go to Gary to check it out. They went and said they would try it, but reserved the right to pull out at any time.

With that agreement in place, I went back to the federal mediator and asked when we could start, and he said, “I can’t do it for you. I’m not in your territory.”

Shocked, I asked, “Who is in our territory?”

Come to find out there was no one in our territory trained as a non-adversarial bargaining mediator. I explained that everything was in place and asked what I was going to do to keep this on track. Thankfully he said, “Let me talk to my wife. She is a professor at Michigan State and knows all about the process from me. I’ll coach her on the side.”

With that, we paid her to come out and lead the negotiations. Throughout the process, you sit in a circle, and every other person is a board representative, teacher, administrator, etc. Each side gathers their problems in advance and brings them into the negotiation. The administrative team and the board members had about 25 problems. The teachers had 252. I immediately thought, “What the heck did I get myself into?”

We found that a lot of the issues were similar, and grouped them into categories. Next, issues were assigned to a person from the administrative side and a person from the teacher side. Together they went and researched how to help solve the problem. They came back and gave a presentation on what they found. Those doing the research could suggest how to solve the specific problem, but the whole team had to agree on the solution.

After we started the actual negotiation process, we finished it in only seven days. Everyone agreed on the solutions, two months before the contract was even up. Looking back, it was amazing that it worked. I shared this experience at a Stephen Covey conference, and he said it was the best one person thinking win-win story he ever heard.

I retired in 1997. The day after I retired, I got a call from the provost at Quincy University, and he asked me not to do anything until I talked to them.

One Day After Retirement

Quincy University was starting an administration program and needed someone like me who had the experience and a doctorate. I agreed to become a part of the QU staff and assisted in getting the administration program up and running. After being in that role for one year, I was asked by the education staff to be the dean. I wasn’t really interested in doing that, but they kept asking.

Finally, I agreed to do it if the administration appointed me without an interview. I was the dean for four years until I started having heart problems in 2004. Subsequently, QU was looking to hire a new education professor. Instead, I asked the administration to hire a dean so I could return to teaching my graduate classes in personnel and leadership, as well as an introduction to education class for undergraduates. Teaching was my passion, and it gave me the opportunity to emphasize the importance of servant leadership to both my graduate and undergraduate students.

“The education class was the most fun class I ever taught.”

In this class, I taught them Stephen Covey’s 7 Habits. My students had the opportunity to go in and teach in classrooms at Dewey School. They taught the students lessons on the 7 Habits. The teachers at Dewey really got fired up about the 7 Habits, and wanted to learn about it themselves. I wrote a grant and had the opportunity to take a group of teachers from Dewey School to Raleigh, North Carolina, to visit a Stephen Covey lighthouse school that is run by the individual that started the 7 habits initiative in schools. The visit really inspired the teachers.

The teachers came back to Quincy and started talking it up, and before long the entire school was on board. In fact, it soon spread to the whole county. At one point, there were 27 schools implementing the 7 Habits at the same time. Of all the work I’ve done in education, I am most proud of bringing Stephen Covey’s 7 Habits into schools and helping embed its principles into daily practice.

Mary Nell’s Career

Mary Nell’s first teaching job was also at Quincy Junior High. She taught U.S. History and English. Mary Nell made history in Quincy as the first teacher permitted to continue teaching while pregnant. At the time, women were expected to leave their positions once they became pregnant, which makes her being the first to change that practice pretty exciting.

After our youngest child started kindergarten, she returned to the classroom in a unique and meaningful way. She taught in the hospital’s psychiatric ward, working with students who had been admitted. Classroom teachers would send assignments, and Mary Nell ensured those students stayed on track academically, offering both instruction and steady support during a difficult time in their lives. At first, I questioned if it would be the right fit, but she flourished in the position and really came to love it. The kids were great, and she always had staff right there to help if needed. She worked in this position for fourteen years.

George and Mary Nell’s Children

Tim, our firstborn, was always very bright and he was a ferocious reader. He graduated from the University of Iowa, though just barely – not because he lacked ability, but because he was still searching for direction and unsure of what he wanted to pursue.

After graduating, he decided to take some time away from school and worked as a manager at Godfather’s Pizza. Then one day, he surprised me. He said, “I think I’m going to apply to law school.”

I remember my first reaction: “How are you going to get into law school?”

Without hesitation, he replied, “I’m going to try.”

He took the LSAT, scored in the 99th percentile, and was quickly accepted to Saint Louis University. During his first semester in 1994, he thought he had the flu, but it turned out to be a ruptured appendix. The surgery appeared to go well, and he initially seemed to be recovering. We were there with him, talking and feeling reassured.

Tragically, sometime during the night, he suffered complications – what we believe was a malfunction of his morphine pump. He slipped into a morphine-induced coma and died a few days later. He is missed every day.

Ted is our second child. He too is extremely intelligent and enjoyed being a part of QHS athletics. In fact, he was on the basketball team that came in fourth in the state in 1990. He graduated from Western Illinois University and got his master’s in Economics. He met his wife, Natalie, through work – both were in human resources and compensation. Ted’s work with Caterpillar has taken them from Peoria, to Nashville, and now he is Vice President Total Rewards at Caterpillar in Dallas. Ted and Natalie have one son, Henrik, who is in 8th grade. He is a great student and an excellent hockey player.

Susan, our youngest, danced her way through school here in Quincy and at Millikin University. She earned a minor in dance and a degree in Communication emphasis public relations. She went to work for a Chicago-based company where she met her husband, Jason Scott. Jason holds a degree in industrial design. His work has taken them from Atlanta, to South Carolina and now to Winston-Salem, North Carolina where they have resided since 2015.

Susan and Jason have three children. William (20), is a sophomore at University of North Carolina Wilmington, Colin (19) is a freshman at Appalachian State University, and Elizabeth (16) is a sophomore at Mount Tabor High School.

Susan works as the Parent Involvement Coordinator at Thomas Jefferson Middle School (TJMS). All three of her children attended school at TJMS. She volunteered there so much they finally offered her a job. She is the webmaster and handles all school communication including social media and weekly messaging sent out to families. This past year her district suffered a severe budget crisis and many employees were laid off. Susan tried to get the school to fire her in an effort to allow others to keep their jobs, but they wouldn’t do it. While she doesn’t have a degree in education, she always found a way to be a part of public schools through volunteering and now her job.

Most Rewarding Accomplishments in Life

Professionally, the most rewarding accomplishment of my tenure as superintendent was transforming the negotiation process at Quincy Public Schools. Equally meaningful was teaching The 7 Habits at Quincy University and introducing them to Quincy Public Schools, where it was gratifying to watch the principles take root. These endeavors resulted in both QPS and QU developing awards in my honor. QPS annually awards the Dr. George Meyer Award for an Outstanding Licensed Staff Member. According to QPS this award is given to an educator that embodies the dedication, love of teaching, and care of children that was exhibited by me throughout my career. At Quincy University they annually award the Dr. George Meyer Servant Leadership Award. It is given to a graduating senior who demonstrated the principles of servant leadership during their time at QU.

Personally, my greatest accomplishment was sharing 60 years of marriage with Mary Nell. Our final year together was especially meaningful. We were both honored with honorary doctorates from Quincy University, a recognition we deeply treasured.

That summer, we took a family cruise sailing out of New York, a joyful time surrounded by those we love. We even brought our priest, Father Leo, with us, which made the experience all the more special. As an added delight, our great-niece was a performer on the ship, giving us yet another reason to celebrate.

In August of 2023, we had a beautiful stretch of celebrations. Mary Nell’s birthday was August 16th, mine was August 23rd, and our 60th wedding anniversary was August 24th. I think of it as “Christmas in August,” as we celebrated six decades of marriage – grateful for the life we built and shared.

In October of that year, Mary Nell moved into a care facility. It was one of the most difficult decisions I have ever had to make. I simply could no longer keep her safe at home, as she had begun falling frequently. To ease the transition, I told her we were going on a vacation.

Mary Nell passed away the following April, in 2024. She had been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease in 2019, though we had recognized signs of memory loss even before then. In many ways, she did remarkably well for a long time, and I am grateful for the years we shared together.

Life Purpose

I believe my purpose in life has been to help people reach their full potential and to make a positive difference in all that I do.

Every Thanksgiving, my wife would write a personal poem for all at the Thanksgiving table. My daughter chose to carry on that tradition and wrote the poems herself. In mine, she wrote:

“You truly are a difference maker –
Always a giver, never a taker.”

Those words meant a lot to me. They captured what I have tried to live out throughout my life – to be a giver, and to make a difference wherever I could.