Located on the base of a large caveman statue is a small, marble plaque monumented on the east side that reads:
IN MEMORY OF
HANK GEISKE
1935 - 2013
CHIEF BIG HORN
I was able to locate an online edition of the Sneak Preview newsletter from July 2013 which covered an article on the infamous Grants Pass Caveman and which mentioned Hank Geiske (his mention is bolded). It reads:
The Caveman Statue Will Stay
Hank Geiske and his fellow Cavemen stand by their man
The founding fathers of the Oregon Cavemen back in 1922 would probably findit amusing how seriously some people have responded to their organization—and the Caveman Statue—over the years. The idea behind the Cavemen was totally tongue-in-cheek, something entertaining that they hoped would put Grants Pass on the map.
he plaque at the Caveman Statue says it all: “The Cavemen is composed of local businessmen who travel far and wide spreading good will and tourist information … The Cavemen, dressed in animal skins, wearing horsehair wigs, buck teeth and ‘big horns,’ run rampant in parades and gatherings … They are always on hand for a prank or a joke on an important personality visiting Grants Pass, or elsewhere, and are quick to spot and capture pretty girls who look like they could take a joke … The main purpose is to publicize Grants Pass and Josephine County.”
The plaque was written in 1970, the year the Caveman Statue had been dedicated in a public ceremony on Memorial Day, attended by hundreds. The club had commissioned a sculptor out of Venice, California, to build a 17-foot fiberglass statue of a Neanderthal holding a club. The fact that no Neanderthals ever roamed North America was irrelevant since the club was only having fun, anyway.
“The Oregon Cavemen were all about promoting Grants Pass and Josephine County,” said long-time Caveman Hank Geiske in an interview with the Sneak Preview at Black Bear Diner, just down the street from the statue. “And it worked. We got national and international attention. We appeared at openings of national and local interest, including the opening of the Golden Gate Bridge and a Broadway show. We ‘initiated’ a lot of Presidents, including Ronald Reagan, John Kennedy, and Richard Nixon. It was all for fun, and people enjoyed it. We even made the news in Russia in 1948, when we stopped the bus that presidential candidate Thomas Dewey was on and initiated him into the club. The Russians took it very seriously.”
At one time the club numbered over 300, but it’s now down to nine active members. Their current public appearances are few and far between, but the Caveman Statue is still there, nestled in between some trees, shrubs, and the Chamber of Commerce Building.
Colene Martin, executive director of the Chamber, and her staff are all fans of the 43-year-old Caveman. When I stopped by for a visit last week, they all agreed that the statue is still a tourist attraction, and that not a day goes by when people are not seen taking pictures.
On closer inspection, one can see that the old guy needs a paint job and some sprucing up. Hank Geiske agrees. “There’s been some wear and tear over the years,” he said. “We’ve had some vandalism and, of course, the fie back in 2005. The kid who started that fie was supposed to pay us back the $7,500 it cost to repair the statue, but we never saw a cent. We had recently budgeted the money to have it painted.”
In January, one of their members, Carl Rhodes, decided he had the perfect solution—move the statue to Grants Pass High School and let them take care of it. He apparently conferred with GPHS maintenance chief James Lowe, who had the perfect spot picked out next to the football stadium. Confident that it was a good plan, Rhodes took his appeal to the Grants Pass School Board.”
“He took it on himself to do this,” Geiske said. “He actually mentioned it to me one time, and I told him not to do anything foolish, that the rest of the guys in the club wouldn’t go for it.”
How right he was. After Rhodes got the cold shoulder from the School Board (and the principal of the high school), the Cavemen met on March 7 and voted not to move the statue anywhere.