At three years old, Melissa Geppi Bowersox went to work for the family business.
She started helping her dad, Stephen Geppi, out in his comic book store, below a TV repair shop on Edmondson Avenue in Catonsville. When she could count to 100, she was promoted to counting out sets of comic book bags for sale.
Her most recent promotion in the family business was a bit bigger. Last month, Bowersox, 36, was appointed executive vice president of Geppi?s Entertainment Museum. Except for a few years running her own wedding planning business, it?s just the latest role for her in her father?s business, going back to those early years in the comic book store.
“I?ve been around it my whole life,” Bowersox said. “I have a master?s degree from Geppi University.”
After her independent planning business, Bowersox joined the museum with its 2004 opening, originally working on events and promotions. She now oversees day-to-day operations of the museum, but her ideas haven?t stopped flowing.
“The big thing is controlling all the ideas I have, making sure I don?t do too many things at once,” she said. “I tend to be the person who has more ideas than we can do.”
Her co-workers agree.
“Some people just have a gift. It?s a leadership quality where they just look at a situation, and size it up, and determine what sits best, and move forward with it,” said John Snyder, the museum?s president and longtime friend of Geppi. “She?s pretty much mastered that.”
Snyder said Bowersox also took the extra time to get to know the museum?s pop culture icons, and the role they played for decades of children. It?s the kind of dedication her father said she?s shown from an early age.
“I guess quietly ? she never stopped observing what my career was doing,” Geppi said. “As a result, when the museum came long, it was a perfect fit. She?s a very aggressive breadwinner, if you will. She wants to make a difference, she has high aspirations.”
Bowersox said she now hopes to use the museum to reach out to kids and teach them about the value of preserving historical artifacts. She said the museum has been able to find great items dating from the 1960s and back to the 1800s, whose original owners took care of them, but has had trouble locating more recent items from the disposable era of the 1980s and 1990s.
“They took care of their belongings, you valued what you had, because you couldn?t run down to Wal-Mart and get another one,” she said. “We?re going to lose that history if we don?t teach kids to think like that.”
