Paula Geonie, founder of groups dedicated to victims, dies at 74

On Feb. 9, 1982, two armed invaders burst into a home in Roslyn Heights where five women were playing mah-jongg. Wielding a gun and an ax, they robbed, handcuffed and threatened the quintet with death before eventually leaving, their identities never definitively known.

One of those women. Paula Broxmeyer at the time, Paula Geonie after a divorce and remarriage, found a way to fight back — not in that terrifying moment but shortly afterward, as the founder of multiple organizations dedicated to victims and to teaching children how to recognize and react to danger. Her efforts would lead to accolades from far beyond Long Island’s shores.

"The weekend I met her, we made plans to go out the following week," remembered her husband, Rob Geonie, of Commack, "but then she couldn't go because, she said, ‘I have to go to Washington.’ She didn't tell me the reason. And when she came back, she told me that she had had lunch with the president," Ronald Reagan, as a recipient of the 1986 President’s Volunteer Action Award.

It was an auspicious beginning. The couple married on May 15, 1988, and "had a great relationship" during their 37 years of marriage, Rob Geonie said. "Best friends," he added emotionally. "Soulmates, as some people call it."

Paula Geonie, who died at the care facility Apex in South Huntington on Oct. 1, age 74, due to complications from Alzheimer’s disease, was equally a soulmate to her friend Helaine Ayers, ever since age 10 in Deer Park.

"She's the sister I never had," said Ayers, of Coconut Creek, Florida. "That's the only way to put it. We just connected. We were there for one another. We understood one another. It just clicked, and she was my everything." When Ayers married in 1991, Geonie and her husband hosted the nuptials at their then-home  in Melville. Paula was maid of honor.

"She was the most selfless person," said Evan Broxmeyer, of Fort Salonga, one of Geonie’s sons. "It was always about everyone else. I mean, she did have to have her hair and her nails done," he added fondly. "But besides that, it was everyone else, plain and simple." And for all her volunteerism and her professional work then as an aerobics instructor, "She always made sure she tucked us in, no matter what, no matter how busy."

Paula Rubin was born April 17, 1951, in Manhattan and spent her early years in Brooklyn, one of five children of Sam Rubin, a newspaper delivery-truck driver, and Rhoda S. Jablowitz Rubin. Rhoda in 1965 would found the Suffolk County franchise of the then-fledgling diet-and-exercise program Weight Watchers — enjoying enough success to buy a 3-acre working farm in Calverton in 1988. This eventually grew to become the 17-acre Baiting Hollow Farm Vineyard, producing wine since 2007. Rhoda sold the Weight Watchers franchise in 2006. 

The family had moved to Suffolkin 1961, and Paula graduated from Deer Park High School eight years later. She went on to attend Hofstra University, in Hempstead, leaving after two years to marry the late Mark Broxmeyer, future cofounder of the Long Island apartment-house conglomerate Fairfield Properties, in 1972. The couple divorced in 1985.

Paula by then had begun following her calling for victims advocacy. She founded a neighborhood watch, the Long Island Association to Increase Security in Our Neighborhoods  (LIAISON), which became "the first group to hold a National Night Out, a symbolic showing of neighborhood solidarity against crime," Newsday reported. Along with her White House appearance, Geonie found herself discussing neighborhood safety on NBC’s "Today," "CBS Morning News" and elsewhere.

Geonie additionally founded the nonprofit organization Playing It Safe, which produced educational materials for children ages 3 to 8, teaching them how to recognize and respond to danger, and Safety Tots, which produced a CD-ROM, flashcards and other media. In the 1990s, when funding cuts made it difficult to keep Playing It Safe going, the nonprofit Big Brothers Big Sisters of Long Island took it on.

Along with to her presidential citation, her accolades included New York State’s Eleanor Roosevelt Community Service Award (1987),  as well as honors from the Nassau Coalition on Child Abuse and Neglect (1989) and the Long Island Association of Crime Prevention Officers (1990). In 1989, she was an honoree in the leadership category in Newsday’s inaugural Volunteer Recognition Program.

Beginning in 1995, she spent several years as a certified aerobics instructor for Weight Watchers and produced the home-video programs "Every Body’s Workout" and "Walking with Paula."

In addition to her husband and son Evan, she is survived by her mother, of Commack; sons Michael Broxmeyer, of Melville, and Alan Gordon, of Commack; brother Richard Rubin, of Naples, Florida; sisters Sharon Levine and Carolyn Rubin, both of Commack, and Janet Tunis, of Farmingville; and eight grandchildren.

Following a service Sunday at the chapel of Gutterman’s Funeral Home in Woodbury, she was buried at Pinelawn Memorial Park and Arboretum in East Farmingdale.