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- Dr. Frank Freshour
College of Education Faculty Oral Histories
Dr. Frank Freshour
LB: Today is November 28, 2005. My name is Lou Bowers. Today, I will be interviewing Dr. Frank Freshour, who was a faculty member of the College of Education and now retired. Let’s begin the interview with you telling us a little about yourself before you came to USF. What did you do? Where were you were located? And where did you go to college?
FF: I bounced around a while. It’ll take a while to tell you all the colleges I was kicked out of. I’m originally from Portsmouth, Ohio. I started out at Miami University of Ohio. Then I went to Otterbeim College, which is just North of Columbus and then I went to Marshall University in Huntington, West Virginia. Then I was in the Army for a couple of years over in Europe. When I came back, I went to Ohio State University. I got my bachelor’s degree there in elementary education. I eventually went to Dallas and was sports director for the Dallas YMCA. I attended Southern Methodist University while I was there. After that, I enrolled at University of Miami in Coral Cables, Florida. I didn’t go there because I got a fellowship to the University of Florida to work on my doctorate. They were paying me more tax free than I was making as a teacher. So I went to the University of Florida and got my doctorate in reading education.
LB: I seem to remember you having an athletic career at Ohio State University.
FF: Well I played baseball there. I played at Ohio State and had some very interesting and successful teammates: Frank Howard, played for the Senators and the Dodgers; Ron Neichwich, pitched for the Indians and the Tigers; Del Solto, pitched for the Red Sox; and Johnny Edwards, who caught for the Cincinnati Reds. There were probably a few others. With all those guys on our team we only finished third in our conference.
LB: So you’re at the University of Florida completing your doctorate and how is it that you heard about or came to consider USF and accept a position in the College of Education?
FF: Well, the program I was in provided a variety of internships that my doctorate program didn’t. One of the things I did was to work in the reading center at the University of Florida where George Spache was famous for many years. A lady who worked there said her daughter was down here and this was a new university. It was my intention to go back to Palm Beach County. I didn’t have any intentions of going to the university level. I thought, “Well, okay.” She suggested that it was a good place to look at so I came down and interviewed. They wanted faculty here and so I came here finished my dissertation when I started at the College in 1969.
LB: Now, what was the department that you were in the early years?
FF: I was in the Reading Education Program.
LB: You were in the Reading Education Program?
FF: For many, many years, all I did was teach reading. I got interested in working with interns out in the schools and so eventually when I joined with the Early Childhood and Language Arts Department in Elementary Education. We then became Childhood Education. I spent a lot of my time working out in the schools with interns because I really enjoyed that.
LB: When you first came to USF how did you find it compared to the University of Florida and several other universities you had experienced?
FF: Well, it would be a little different comparing the two because I was a student up until that point. Gainesville was an old established institution. Florida Atlantic had been more of a newer university and the University of South Florida was also new. It seemed to be a very lively place because a lot of people were here with many exciting ideas and a lot of enthusiasm for things they were doing.
LB: What were some of the things the department was involved in over the years with the schools or on campus?
FF: Well, again back to the internship programs, which we had as I know you did in physical education. We had a very strong internship program and our students were out in the schools two mornings a week for three hours during the first semester in the College. Later on they were out four mornings a week for three hours and they had their final internship which is traditionally one that most people are familiar with. So this was, I think, one of the strengths of our program. The internship was the thing I really enjoyed doing because I got so many good ideas from the teachers as went from school to school. Eventually, I was placing interns with my own former students and eventually with their children who also became teachers.
LB: I’m sure there were some challenges along the way, for the department and perhaps for you as well. Are there any that stand out?
FF: Well, I don’t know of anything specifically. In general, it was always money. We didn’t have money to do this and we were forced to cut back and economize and of course all the different departments were competing with each other for the money. In a way, that was good because it forced us to be more efficient and to really analyze our situation. On the other hand, it may have created some hard feelings among the different departments and some of the faculty members, because we were trying to keep our money or take it away from someone else.