Geneva Boren, a Lubbock businesswoman who was the G. behind – and founder of – staffing agency G. Boren Services, is being remembered for her faith, service to her country and entrepreneurship after she died Wednesday.
She was 101.
“As one of the last living voices of the Greatest Generation, her life stood as a radiant testimony to the grace, strength and steadfast faith that helped shape a century,” reads a statement from Boren’s family, shared in her obituary.
Boren, a Tennessee native, worked as a civilian employee at the Lubbock Army Air Field – later known as Reese Air Force Base – during World War II, according to Avalanche-Journal archives. She was assigned to one of the highest-ranking civilian positions a woman could hold there at the time. Her husband Percy, served in the military during the war, and the couple would later settle down and start a family in Lubbock, raising children Sandra and Gary and adopted daughter Joan.
Boren was a secretary to the commander of Reese Air Force Base in the 1950s, and she had reached the top of her classification, she told the Avalanche-Journal for an A-J Remembers history feature in 2015.
“One day I was looking out the window, and I looked up at the sky and thought … the sky’s the limit,” Boren recalled for the feature.
That’s when she pursued her entrepreneurial path.
She borrowed $40 from Archie Huckabee at Lubbock National Bank to buy a typewriter, and opened a secretarial services business in her garage in 1960, according to the story.
That initiative, though short lived, would soon lead Geneva Boren to start what would become G. Boren Services, a personnel, security and human resource consulting company that was a staple at large community gatherings like concerts and athletic events for decades. She remained involved in the business well into her 90s. She often blended her devout Christian faith and mentorship to young women into the way she ran the company.
“Her office became a haven for young mothers seeking flexible work, for employers in need of trusted help, and for anyone who walked in needing a second chance,” Boren’s family wrote. “She was a mentor before mentorship was trendy, and a boss who prayed with her staff daily. Geneva didn’t just run a business; she cultivated people.”
Although her family would go on to sell the company several years ago, her impact on workers in West Texas and beyond lives on.
“To this day, thousands of West Texans – some knowingly, many not – owe their careers, or at least their first chance, to a woman who believed in them before anyone else did,” Boren’s family wrote.
A viewing for friends and family will be held from 4 to 6 p.m. Friday, June 20 at Sanders Funeral Home on Main Street. A celebration of Geneva’s life will take place at 11 a.m. Saturday, June 21, in the Chapel at Trinity Church, followed by a graveside service at 2 p.m. at the City of Lubbock Cemetery. In lieu of flowers, the family kindly requests that donations be made to the Missions Fund at Trinity Church, in honor of Geneva’s lifelong mission to spread the gospel of Jesus Christ to the world.
This article originally appeared on Lubbock Avalanche-Journal: Geneva Boren remembered for Lubbock entrepreneurship, service and faith
Reporting by Adam D. Young, Lubbock Avalanche-Journal / Lubbock Avalanche-Journal
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