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CSULB
grad keeps coming back
By Jo Appleton
Summer On-line Forty-Niner
Inge Frese describes
herself as a humanitarian. For as long as she can remember,
she has always loved helping other people.
It started while she was a foreign language student at Cal
State Long Beach. Although she was born to German immigrant
parents who spoke English as a second language, she began
tutoring international students in English and Spanish.
While at CSULB, she majored in Spanish and obtained a minor
in German, Russian and French. Her goal: to travel the globe
and teach or to simply employ her language and social skills
to help people in whatever capacity she might be needed.
That was forty years ago.
Today, Frese, 62, says although her journey after graduation
led her down different paths, her college days and experiences
shaped her development in a profound and positive way. The
journey brought her out of Long Beach - the city that she
lived in most of her life and holds her heart to this day
- to Escondido. Currently she works as a librarian in the
small neighboring city of Vista.
Frese says she loves the learning environment, whether she
is the student or the teacher but tells herself that one day
she will get back to Long Beach and be a part of it all again.
In 1960, when Frese first enrolled at CSULB, America was in
the age of youth. After World War II, 70 million children
from the baby boom era emerged as teen-agers and young adults.
It was a time of rebellion and revolution that brought about
change in all facets of American life, from education and
entertainment to lifestyles and laws. It was a time when everyone
wanted to make a difference in the world, and really believed
that they could. Frese wanted to make a difference too.
But while most of her classmates were doing the “Twist” to
Chubby Checker or “Surfin’ U.S.A.,” to the Beach Boys, Frese
was in the thick of academia. She remembers the university
being boisterous with school spirit rallies, sports events
and parades but says she was never very interested in the
popular crowds and parties.
Frese was one who preferred cultural enrichment events instead.
Trading the popular bouffant hairstyle of the early ’60s for
the short, cropped look, the thick Kohl eyeliner for bifocals
and rock and roll for classical violin. She was more of the
intellectual type.
She joined the international and the foreign language clubs
on campus, where she met her best friend Samantha while Frese
was helping her learn English. Samantha would later graduate
from CSULB with a degree in business.
Frese had played classical violin since she was 8 years old,
and by the time she was in college, was playing quite regular
with the Bellflower Orchestra in Long Beach.
She never had a boyfriend in college; she was simply too busy
with her studies. But she did have a favorite professor.
“I wouldn’t say I had a crush,” but Russian professor Joseph
Ctvrlik was tall, good-looking and had a certain kind of demeanor,
she explained. “I just liked him.”
After earning a bachelor’s degree, Frese stayed at college
to get her teaching credentials and, in 1965, began teaching
high school in Long Beach.
Being more of a one-on-one or small group teacher, at 28 she
went back to CSULB and took a paid position as a tutor. She
still hadn’t lost sight of her goal to travel the world; she
was simply trying to find a way to fund it.
Tutoring was not the way to raise money for a global excursion,
she soon learned. But like most college students still living
at home, Frese was able to take more time to figure out the
niche that would get her on the way to obtaining her dreams.
By 30, Frese was back at CSULB taking business classes and
deciding on whether she should go for her master’s degree.
Meanwhile, to quench her cultural thirst, Frese, like many
young intellectuals in the ’70s, did manage a few brief trips
with her friends around the world, such as South America,
France, Denmark and Germany.
She also began working for various children’s programs that
she traveled with to organize educational classroom visits,
story-time programs and special events.
Money was tight though, so she started looking for better
work. Frese’s parents had retired and moved out of Long Beach.
She stayed in the city and worked for a title company for
a few years before it closed down, then got a job at a shipping
company.
She had hoped to break into the international business of
importing and exporting goods and, who knew, maybe she would
be relocated to another seaport, maybe in another country.
After all, Long Beach does have the biggest international
seaport on the West Coast.
But for Frese, it was not yet meant to be. In 1983, Frese’s
parents asked for her help. They were getting on in their
years and falling ill more and more often and they needed
her to be nearer to them. She quit her job and moved into
their condo in Escondido to take care of them.
It was quite a change.
Long Beach was a huge metropolis of culture and diversity.
Escondido, at
that time, was a fairly large city but still had a small town
feel to it because it was in a rural part of San Diego County.
At one point, she couldn’t take it and even moved back to
Long Beach for a while, but she couldn’t stay there. It just
didn’t feel right, she said. Her father was getting steadily
worse so she moved back to Escondido. He died several months
later.
Frese put her own life on hold while she continued taking
care of her mother full time, but she always kept in touch
with her friends in Long Beach while making new ones in Escondido.
She joined a local orchestra and started collecting books.
She worked part time at various temporary jobs until applying
at the public library in Vista, where she has been employed
for the last 12 years. Her mother, who died in 1998, had always
said she would make a good librarian.
Working as a librarian is very gratifying for Frese. It was
not a goal, she said, her education and interests naturally
pointed her in that direction.
Immersed in the humanitarian, cultural and intellectual atmosphere
she has always craved, Frese organizes bilingual operations
at the library and helps to organize annual cultural events.
“It’s the hardest job I’ve ever had physically,” she said.
“But I really do love it. It’s broadened my horizons and given
me the drive to go back to school.”
At home, she sits on a couch in her living room. Next to it,
a black and gold CSULB lamp sits on a side table surrounded
by antique dolls and books.
Frese ponders her future. She has a few more years until she
retires and a modest savings account she has built up over
the years. She thumbs through the latest Alumni Association
newsletter.
“I would like to go back to Long Beach State,” she says eventually.
“I still have a lot of things I want to do.”
She stares at the two-dozen stacks of travel books in the
middle of the room, a mere fraction of her total book collection
piled around the little condo her parents left her. The world
is big and there are many places she still has left to visit.
“I’m not exactly sure how and when,” Frese said convincingly.
“But I will do it.”
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Photos
courtesy of Inge Frese
Inge Frese, in 1962, was a senior at Cal State
Long Beach with aspirations to travel the world and do humanitarian.
She majored in foreign language and is now fluent in five
languages.
Frese,
shown here in January at a fund-raiser in Solana Beach, San
Diego now lives in Vista, Calif. where she works as a librarian
and helps to organize cultural events around the San Diego
County.
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