Distinguished St. Olaf Alumnae Remembers Graham Stanton "Stan" Frear

NRC received the following tribute to Stan Frear from St. Olaf alumnae Kathy A. Megyeri. It is entitled, "A Tribute to My Mentor, Graham Frear."

One of St. Olaf’s finest professors passed away this month, a true loss because he taught so many of us English teachers about “professional excellence,” and he was the one instructor most responsible for my becoming a high school English teacher for my entire career.

Associate Professor of English Emeritus Graham Frear ’47 corresponded with me regularly for the last fifty years and I will miss him terribly. After serving in the Marine Corps during World War II, he began a 15-year career teaching secondary biology and English at Northfield High School. In 1962, he joined St. Olaf English faculty, and in 1986, he retired.

Professor Frear calculated that during his St. Olaf teaching career, he administered 6,308 exams, evaluated 9,533 papers, taught 18 different courses to over 2,006 students and worked with 409 English education supervisors including my own cooperating teacher at North High School in Minneapolis. He did not include in his tally the hours of paperwork, committee meetings, and conferences. During his years of teaching in those rooms above St. Olaf’s library, he taught American literature, structural linguistics, semantics, and introduced me to S. I. Hayakawa, one of America’s greatest semanticists, a writer, a U.S. Senator, and a college president. In later years, Frear also taught senior citizens at Northfield Retirement Community where he lived during his final years. His classes on Irish literature and on the poetry of Langston Hughes were repeatedly requested by residents. And Frear was a prolific writer himself as he wrote at least one poem a day. Eventually, two books of his poetry were published and were extremely popular particularly in Minnesota and in the Northfield area. But most importantly for me personally, Frear demonstrated that high school students need to be repeatedly exposed to good literature, so I copied his technique of filling my classroom with quality magazines, books, and paperbacks—materials students could borrow, read in class, or even steal. Most of all, he believed that what we did in the classroom really mattered, and he convinced me and so many others that teaching is the profession that most benefits society and impacts most positively on youth.

Later, Frear advised me about curriculum matters during my teaching career in the Maryland school system. In the ‘60’s, one of the best units in the curriculum was the “Bible As Literature.” It taught students to understand what John Steinbeck meant when he claimed his novel THE PEARL was a “parable”; what a character in Lorraine Hansberry’s RAISIN IN THE SUN referred to when she said, “Thirty pieces of silver and not a coin less”; what “forty days and forty nights” referred to in the title of Iyanla Vansant’s book ONE DAY MY SOUL JUST OPENED UP: FORTY DAYS AND FORTY NIGHTS TOWARD SPIRITUAL STRENGTH AND PERSONAL GROWTH; and what Helen Keller meant when she wrote, “Words made the world blossom for me, like Aaron’s rod with flowers.” Professor Frear often quoted the line, “We are all brothers, like Cain and Abel,” and recommended other Biblical allusions that were examined in our classes. But after all his unpaid and tireless help developing the unit with us Maryland teachers, the “Bible As Literature” became controversial because many parents felt it smacked of “religious indoctrination” so it was abruptly dropped from the curriculum, and the thousands of Bibles our county had purchased were donated to the Gideons to be placed in local hotel rooms. Not to be discouraged with the unit’s demise, Frear reminded me that Christ was the world’s greatest teacher, that teaching was a “calling” for many of us as a way to serve God in daily life, and therefore that the profession of teaching deserved respect. Now, students aren’t learning Biblical allusions anywhere—not from home, school, or church, so to them “Aaron’s rod” means his “hot car,” “forty days and forty nights” lacks any meaning whatsoever, and, as they say, “only God knows what a parable is.” Frear always kept his sense of humor and optimism. He said we are like candles which light others while consuming ourselves. Teachers are still ignited by the curiosity of youth, teachers like literature and young people, and teachers know they make a difference in lives. He often quoted astronaut Christa McAuliffe who claimed, “I touch the future; I teach.” Frear once wrote me, “Teaching was always my way of attempting to impart attitude and dedication more than skills. I’m certain I became a teacher largely through attempting to do what I would have wanted done with me as a student. The teachers I remember were the ones who conveyed a sense of purpose and enthusiasm more than were centered on subject matter.” 

I received St. Olaf’s Distinguished Alumnae Award in 1995 because I was nominated by Professor Frear, and I hope that award validated becoming the kind of teacher that Professor Frear was. As he influenced me, I like to think that all of us alumni in one way or another have been inspired by a professor we had at St. Olaf. I will carry the memory of this remarkable mentor with me forever but I don’t have the courage like Frear to count the numbers of classes taught, papers graded, and nights of chaperone duties. Perhaps Frear characterized the Ole trained teacher the best when he recommended the profession to me so long ago. His quote, which I framed and hung on my wall, best describes our profession:

"Teaching is a good way to make a living. Not only does one enjoy the process itself (how lovely the sound of one’s own voice), but it’s like being a “doorkeeper in the house of the Lord,” which is authoritatively stated to be better than sitting in the “seats of the scornful.”

Today, dear Professor Frear, you are indeed a doorkeeper in the House of the Lord.