ALUMNI SPOTLIGHT: Mr. Richard Geriner ’86 and his family support BC’s Planned Giving program
Richard Geriner, Benedictine Military School Class of 1986, and his wife, Janet, have made plans to include Benedictine in their estate plans to leave a legacy which will help to ensure the future of BC for many generations to come.
“We want to make sure that part of our legacy, when we pass, we want BC to be remembered for everything the school has done for us and for our sons,” Geriner, a Northwestern Mutual financial advisor, said of the couple’s sons, Tripp ’17, Carter ’19, and Holden ’22, who also are Benedictine Military School graduates. “We want to leave something behind for BC to pass on as just another way of giving back. With me being in the insurance, financial, and estate planning business, that’s what I do for a living. And knowing that I can do this and maybe my gift can be magnified by what I’m leaving at death, and the fact that there are a lot of tax benefits for doing that, it just makes sense. Why leave this where a good chunk of it goes to the government and to pay taxes? Why not leave it to BC, the school that we just love and think so much of, and that has been such a big part of our family? We hope to do even more down the road with our situation.”
Planned giving is also referred to as gift planning or legacy giving. It enables philanthropic individuals to make larger gifts to charitable organizations than they could make from ordinary income. Some planned gifts provide life-long income. Other gift plans use estate and tax planning to provide for charity and heirs in ways that maximize the gift and/or minimize its impact on the donor’s estate. A planned gift is any major gift, made in lifetime or at death as part of a donor’s overall financial and/or estate planning. These include gifts of equity, life insurance, real estate, personal property, or cash.
Geriner and all three of his sons played football for BC. Holden graduated from Auburn University, where he was a quarterback, with a finance degree in December 2024. He has two years of college football athletic eligibility remaining. He stood on BC’s sideline during the Cadets’ Homecoming football game against Ware County on Oct. 11. Carter, who also played quarterback for BC, returned to campus Oct. 12 and attended his five-year class reunion. He and Tripp, who attended his five-year class reunion in 2022, both work in Atlanta.
“With me being a graduate of the Class of ’86, and Janet moving to Savannah from Carrollton and seeing the brotherhood of BC, the family, the camaraderie; some of our best friends to this day, I could go on and on, Brian Markowitz, Marty Hogan, all of our classmates, just seeing that family and brotherhood, she understands how special BC is,” Richard said. “Our boys all started at (Savannah) Country Day and our family, not being Catholic, making the decision to move them all over to BC for high school … best decision we ever made.”
The Geriners knew their sons would flourish at Benedictine because of the high standards that Cadets are expected to meet.
“First and foremost, the fact that BC is always rooted in faith, first, that’s super important to us,” Richard said. “And how they mold boys into men. The manners, the work ethic, we love the structure, what (Benedictine Headmaster) Fr. Frank (Ziemkiewicz, O.S.B.) has done with the school. And I would also say a big reason for us, too, was with the boys playing football, just the respect and trust we have with Coach (Danny) Britt. He was a big reason. Our sons, they all three played football for BC and we wanted them to play for Coach Britt and A.J. (DeFilippis ’08) and the rest of the coaching staff.”
