UMSL @ 60 - Stan Freerks

Audio file

Aidan Chase - Stan Freerks Oral History.m4a

Transcript

Mr. Chase: Alright then. My name is Aidan Chase. Today is Monday, November 27th, 2023. This interview is being conducted to gather the personal history of Mr. Stan Freerks as a part of the UMSL at 60 oral history recordings. Could you please state and spell your name?

Mr. Freerks: Stanley Freerks. S T A N L E Y F R E E R K S.

Mr. Chase: All right, thank you. Just reminder that this is being recorded and I will have you signed a release form after this interview is concluded. Is that alright?

Mr. Freerks: Sure, that's fine.

Mr. Chase: Alright then, let's get started then. starting off easy, where were you born and where did you grow up?

Mr. Freerks: I was born in Kirkwood or Saint Louis. I grew up in Kirkwood and there you have it.

Mr. Chase: Yeah, to your knowledge. Where is your family from? Like grandparents, ancestors?

Mr. Freerks: Well, let's see on my mother's side. My grandmother was from Boston. And from a long, long-established family known as the Viles, they came over in the 1630s and had a farm near Boston. My grand, her father, Arthur McBride, grew up in upstate New York. And I'm not sure about his family but I think they went back pretty far back to the revolution anyway. Then on my dad's side, his father came, was born I believe it was either in Illinois or Iowa. And they were relatively recent from where, Friesland. So, it's sort of German-Dutch area and his mother was from Norway. She was born in Norway and was an immigrant. And they grew up in Cuyuna, Minnesota. Which is in the iron range. A very small town. And anything else you want to know about my grandparents?

Mr. Chase: No, that about covers it so…

Mr. Freerks: All right, my mother. My mother was born in India. Because her parents were both involved with the Congregational Church, and they were working at a mission school South of Bombay in India. So, she grew up and went to the English school in India. And I think when she was about 10, they moved to Chicago, where my grandfather was involved with the church in Chicago, and ultimately they ended up in Austin, Minnesota, where he became the head of the Congregational Church in Minnesota. My mother went to Carleton College in Northfield. Minnesota, where she met my father. Now my father was a little bit older he was born in 1912. Grew up in that small town, Cuyuna, Minnesota. And after high school, he went into the Navy. He was a musician, played really a lot of different instruments, but he became the bugler on the battleship Colorado. And was in the Navy for three years in the early 30s when he got out of the Navy, he was recruited to go to Carlton College and run track. And that's where he met my mother. He graduated from Carlton College in 1939, Phi Beta Kappa, and was enticed into the Navy again to become a pilot. And so he went down to Pensacola, trained as a pilot, and was then… my mother was two years behind him in college, they got married in 1941. At that point, my dad was stationed in Whidbey Island, Washington state, and then ultimately he was attached to Dutch Harbor, which is in the Aleutian Islands in the Pacific. And during the Battle of Midway he was a PBY pilot, which is a scout plane. And he flew a PBY, he was a squadron commander. And on one of his missions, during, just prior to the Battle of Midway, he spotted a Japanese fleet which was destined to invade Dutch Harbor. By spotting the fleet, the Japanese fleet then turned around and went back to Japan and he was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross. He stayed in Dutch harbor through the war and retired from the Navy after the war as a captain in the Navy. Whereupon he went to University of Minnesota and got his doctorate in chemistry, and ultimately came to Saint Louis, where I was born, to work for Monsanto Chemical Company.

Mr. Chase: Okay.

Mr. Freerks: And my mother remained, although highly educated, just remained, you know, family. Family was. Her career.

Mr. Chase: Just good old stay at home mom?

Mr. Freerks: Yes.

Mr. Chase: How would you describe your relationship with your parents?

Mr. Freerks: It was fine. It was very good.

Mr. Chase: Did you have any siblings growing up?

Mr. Freerks: Yeah, I had a, we were spaced out. I had a brother or have a brother. He's seven years older. He's still with us, he's a dentist. I had an older sister who was five years older who passed, oh, about 15 years ago from cancer. And I have a younger sister who lives in Minnesota who's four years younger. So we were, we all got along pretty. Well, but as I said, we were pretty spaced pretty far apart age wise.

Mr. Chase: You spend a lot of time with extended family like your grandparents or your aunts or your uncles.

Mr. Freerks: Not so much. With my dad's family, grandparents, they were older. We used to go up to Minnesota all the time and stay with my mom's parents in Austin, Minnesota. And when we go up there, we'd sometimes meet my dad's my dad had, I guess it was three brothers and a sister. We lost one of them before that I never knew Uncle Stanley as a matter of fact. But Connie and Harold, we'd see them, my uncles. And then on my mom's side, and that, and Ionne that was his sister. And then on my mom's side, we'd see Esther, and she was the only one in Minnesota that we would see. The Joneses were way up. They were up in Thief River Falls, so we didn't see them very often. And then she had another sister who lived in Darien, CT and we we'd see her periodically.

Mr. Chase: OK, so you said you grew up in Kirkwood and I ended up growing up in Kirkwood too. So, could you just? Yeah. So, could you describe growing up in Kirkwood at that time?

Mr. Freerks: Well, I went to Tillman School, which was fairly close to where we live. And you know it, back in that day, this would have been in the 50s, you know, we just did a lot of neighborhood games. You know, we go, we go out in the street and, you know, we’d play tag, we’d play baseball, we’d play kill the man with the ball. We just, you know, we find games to play. And sometimes we'd all walk up to, there was a pretty good gang of us about… Oh, maybe 10 kids, you know, within two or three years of each other. And we’d play football and or we go up to Tillman School and play baseball. Just pick up games you know it wasn't organized or anything and you know pretty much it was, it was a pretty good neighborhood group. You know, we didn't, you know, was very safe. You know, we go out in the morning. We'd always end up at somebody's house for lunch and then go out and play all afternoon. So, I mean, [you see?] when I was younger and when I got older, you know, more in the 9,10,12 age, then you know things got more organized. I played quarterly baseball, quarterly football and started swimming at the local swim club. We belong to this cool Dale Swim Club (?) and you know that's where I started competitive swimming. I guess that was 9 or 10.

Mr. Chase: OK, so it was college everything you thought about growing up? Or, going into high school, did you ever think about college?

Mr. Freerks: Well, I think you know, my family was very highly educated, as I said. My grandmother on my mother's side went to Smith College and my grandfather went to University of Minnesota and then University of Michigan Law School. And my mother, well, I guess it would be my great uncle. My grandmother’s on my mother's side’s brother went to Harvard and then graduated PhD from Harvard and was actually the chair of the Mizzou History Department for, oh, I'd say from like 1905 through when he retired and passed in 1949. So, college was always considered a uh, you know a done deal you know, there wasn't really much… discussion it was just a matter of. You know where you would go.

Mr. Chase: Right. So that kind of ties into the next question I got here so. Where did you go to high school? And do you think high school prepared you for going to college?

Mr. Freerks: Pretty much, I went to Kirkwood High School and, you know, I think so. I had a couple of really good teachers, and you know the curriculum was always… you know it… it wasn't a slam dunk. I mean, you had to work. I think I had one particular history teacher who was very helpful. He probably taught me more about writing a paper than any of my English teachers. But yeah, so I would say it was good preparation. The uh, I swam on the swimming team, and I was captain of the team in 1970. And ultimately, I went to Cornell University, where I swam on the swimming team and played water polo. And I felt pretty well prepared, I think my writing skills and my technical writing skills weren't the best, but I would put that not so much on the high school as my own lack of attention to it.

Mr. Chase: OK. So, you mentioned Cornell University. What did you study while you were at Cornell?

Mr. Freerks: I went there with the intention of majoring in history, which actually I did major in history. Both, you know my mother and obviously, you know her, my great uncle were history majors. And, but as my, I graduated in seven semester, and by the I would say halfway through my sophomore year I really became more interested in Econ and I probably took as many econ hours as I did history hours, but my degree was in history.

Mr. Chase: What initially drew you to history? Why did you choose that?

Mr. Freerks: I think it was more the just sort of an interest in in world in the world and world affairs. And you know what had come before my mother had been a history major. And really that the teacher that I had for AP American history really sort of, you know, set me on that path. He was very, just interesting, it was just that, you know, I really got into it in his course. I did, you know, I also had thought that I would study sociology because I had a sociology class in high school that was really fascinating. The teacher was great, I think she became one of the Missouri teachers of the year, but she was really good. And really, you know, it got me inspired and interested in sociology so I took sociology 101 my freshman year first semester, and that was the end of my interest in sociology. Really turned me off after that. So that's when I decided to go back. Go back to the home base in history.

Mr. Chase: OK. So, you mentioned halfway through sophomore year you decided, started taking more ECON courses. Uh, I could see how… like interest in world affairs could push you to that, but what were some other of the uh drawing factors?

Mr. Freerks: Well, you know, you had to have a certain number of hours in various silos and econ was a silo of its own. I mean, you could, you could use that as one of your silos. So I was, I was lifeguarding over at Shaw Park, and I had an opportunity to take a summer school Econ course at Wash U. And that course I had no idea, I had never taken any kind of econ, I really didn't understand it at all until I had that basic macroeconomics course at Wash U. And once again, it was one of those courses that just sort of the light went on, said that this is really fascinating stuff, I really like this. And fortunately, you know what I did, you know, once I sort of got the taste for that is a number of, there were at least two, I'm trying to think of there was more than two, of my history courses were actually economic history courses, which I found the combination of the two extremely fascinating.

Mr. Chase: So uh, what ultimately, uh brought you to UMSL?

Mr. Freerks: Well, when I graduated from college, I went through the… what they call their placement service. You know, they had a lot of companies would come on campus and interview. I was a little late to the game because I was not behaving myself as well as I should have, I guess. But anyway, so I started taking interviews a little late, but I did get one offer. It was from Liberty Mutual Insurance company. And I thought I was pretty, I didn't have any money, so I wanted to go to Graduate School. I originally, you know, my plan, freshman/sophomore year, was law school. But after three and a half years of undergraduate, I wasn't too excited about three years of law school. And plus, I was getting a little turned off to just the legal profession. I just didn't think it was going to be as interesting as what I had visualized or fantasized. So, I was more interested because of the ECON courses I had been taking. I was more interested in business, so my plan then was what the heck, you know, they're offering me a job. I'll take it. You know, I can get some experience, earn some money and then go on to Graduate School in business. So that was my, that was my plan going in. So, I went to work for Liberty Mutual and that was, let's see, that was 1974. And they sent me to Dallas and they trained me as they what they call a commercial lines underwriter, which is where you analyze risks in terms of commercial businesses, what their insurance needs are, what the risks, their present. And how you would offer the appropriate coverages and how you would price the insurance based on the obvious intent of the insurance company to make a profit. So it was it was fascinating, and the nice thing about it was you learned about a lot of different businesses because you were always approached with, you know when the sales people would come in and bring in an account, it could be anything from a manufacturing to retail sales to a restaurant to a contractor. So you learned a lot about what goes on in different businesses, which I thought would be really good experience to go on to Graduate School. So once that was like a two-month course in Dallas and then they would assign you, there were eight underwriting offices and the one they assigned me to was in Philadelphia. So, I was working in Philadelphia, and a classmate of mine was getting her MBA at Wharton. So, I went down and talked to her, and she said you should go talk to the, what do you call it? The admissions office. So, I went and met with them and my plan was at that point to, you know, work through another year and then apply to Wharton. And they said that I wouldn't have any problem getting in with my college grades and you know the… test scores that you take. And so that was my plan, to get enough money and then continue on. But in the meantime, you know, I swam in Saint Louis as an age grouper and worked at Shaw Park and a fellow that I had gotten to know there through lifeguarding owned an insurance brokerage here in Saint Louis. And as it turned out, he needed somebody to come work for him, and he offered me a considerable amount more money than I was making at the insurance company, and I thought, “well, I'll put off Graduate School and, you know, get some more money.” So, I moved back. And it was a combination of things. My wife, Terry, she, you know, we grew up together basically swimming. And at that time, you know, we had been kind of on and off. And I came back and then we got back together again and ultimately got married in 1979. But anyway, so I was… that worked out much better for me. I was still interested though in getting the business specific business education, which is why I started out, I went, when I got back, I enrolled in a Masters degree program. At UMSL in econ. And I made it through about, oh, 15 hours. Got, you know, all the prerequisites done. And then Terry and I got married. And she had been at UMSL, So she'd been at Arizona State as a, she was a real swimmer, you know, I was a high school sort of a hacker, you know, in college. Good enough to letter, but certainly not to, I didn't carry the team. But Terry was an All-American at Arizona State and national record holder and I mean she was the real deal.

Mr. Chase: OK, wow.

Mr. Freerks: So, she was finishing, but she had to leave Arizona State and she finished up her undergraduate. And so. And I used to go up on campus. I was taking the ECON courses, but also visiting her up on campus and that's where my connection to UMSL really started. She finished her undergraduate and got a master's degree, and then we got married in 1979. And shortly after that, a few years I, you know, enrolled in the MBA program. Which worked out well, they took all my hours from econ and applied them, so that worked out pretty nicely. But anyway, with this fellow that I had come back to work for… and had planned just to do that for another for a year, we got into some pretty interesting stuff and he and I formed a specialty insurance brokerage. Where we would actually act as an intermediary with specialty insurance carriers for risks that were… I don't want to say uninsurable, but we're outside the main stream. And I found that even more fascinating, because it would be a real challenge, there was a lot of creativity involved, and it was more of a… it was more of an open market as opposed to a very structured market. And so, he and I formed that business, which ultimately he bowed out of in 1984, and I took over and that became my career; was running the this wholesale insurance brokerage.

Mr. Chase: OK. Any fond memories of your time on campus, at UMSL?

Mr. Freerks: Well, I think the best was when you know, Terry was working on her degrees, and I would go up and I'd bring lunch up to her. She was also working with she had, she always had jobs. And one of her jobs was working, there was a… I can't remember what building it was in, but it was a TV station where they were teaching courses, you know, sort of pre online type of thing where you could tune in on. I think there was an education channel back in those days on the regular TV and there would be courses and she was working doing something, I'm not sure what, with that program. So, I would, you know, I was working in Clayton, and I would go by The Posh Nosh, which is still there, you know, get lunch and take it up and we we'd have lunch up on campus, and that was always really nice.

Mr. Chase: Were you involved with any uh campus activities or extracurriculars? I know you mentioned you swam, were you involved on… did UMSL have a swim team?

Mr. Freerks: They had a men's team, they didn't have a women's team. Which was really a shame because, you know, with Terry, they would have been lights out, but they didn't have. In fact, back then, you know, they had no Title IX, so even when that was one of the reasons she couldn't stay at Arizona State, they couldn't give scholarships to women, which she would have would have had for sure. But no, I really didn't get involved too much when I was on campus; other than just, you know, Terry and I taking our classes.

Mr. Chase: OK. Were there any individuals that significantly impacted your college experience while either at Cornell or UMSL?

Mr. Freerks: There were a couple of econ professors at Cornell that really inspired me there. There were a couple of, there was a sociology professor who totally turned me off to sociology, which was a good thing! And there are a couple of history professors who I liked, but really the ones that I like the most were the ECON professors because they were so down to Earth and so practical. At UMSL the… probably the most influential professor I had was Nasser Arashadi, was my finance professor. And one of the things I liked about the MBA program, that was really valuable for me was, you know, I was running this small business and you know, I started out with two other employees and, you know, grew it to four offices and about 28 employees. But I don't think I could have done that without the grounding that I got during the UMSL MBA program in finance, accounting, management, marketing. And Nasser Arashadi, he let me, you know, work on when we do papers. I could do the, you know, insurance issues and write my finance papers based on that, which was really fun and he was encouraging. And so I would say he had the most impact on me up at UMSL, although other ones were great. I never had an issue with any of the professors up there, I thought they were all extremely helpful, interested, and you know, I think the key to it was, you know, they would let me use, like in the marketing class, they would let me create a marketing plan for my business as the marketing plan that I had to turn in for my coursework. So it was really sort of like having, you know, high level consultants helping me with the various, you know, business issues that I was running into.

Mr. Chase: That's really interesting how that kind of blended together, both your business and your coursework. Do you think that gave you a leg up in some circumstances? Or did you kind of hit…

Mr. Freerks: Oh, absolutely.

Mr. Chase: OK. Did you face any real significant challenges during your time at all?

Mr. Freerks: Not really. I mean the only, and they were very, I mean it took me, I guess I started taking classes in like 1978 with the ECON classes. I didn't finish the MBA till 1992. So they were very patient in terms of letting me take the courses when I could.

Mr. Chase: OK, so you graduate in 92, you're still running this business. How does your career continue to evolve after graduation?

Mr. Freerks: Oh well, the business grew, it really grew basically in the late 90s and the early twos. But ultimately, I sold the business in 2011 to a large international brokerage called Arthur J Gallagher. And they kept me on for six years to run the Saint Louis office. And then I retired in 2017.

Mr. Chase: OK. Well, how's retirement treating you?

Mr. Freerks: Great, great. Highly recommend it.

Mr. Chase: I'll keep that in mind. Anything fun you're doing with your free time or?

Mr. Freerks: Well, you know we, or the for the fun part, you know we still swim. We don't compete anymore. We competed for a while in the Masters programs, but we don't compete anymore. But we swim with a group and that's fun. And we travel a lot, you know we've done a lot of international traveling but now we're sort of, especially now we're leaning more towards domestic travel. And really the COVID sort of, kind of pushed us in that direction more so we're you know, we have these targets we did. You know, this was a while ago, this was pre COVID, we did all the state parks in Missouri. You know, we traveled around and just go to the different parks and now we're doing National Parks. And we also do baseball stadiums we’re both, you know, die hard Cardinals fans, as hard as it is to be at the moment. But we were, we still have some faith that somehow they’ll get rid of Mozeliak and this other manager that isn't doing much. But anyway, so we're trying to go to different ballparks around the country with our National Park trips. And we take some cruises, and we're helping to raise a grandnephew that we have that's lost both his parents. He had spent time with his grandfather we shared some time to take the pressure off him, so he, because he was alone, and it was hard. And he has one other aunt. Direct aunt and Terri's his great aunt. So, you know, we spend some time with him and try to help him. He's getting ready to graduate from high school, you know that's been, you know, takes up some of our time which we enjoy. But you know, that's sort of between all that, it keeps us pretty busy.

Mr. Chase: What would you say some of your favorite other ballparks or national parks you've been to?

Mr. Freerks: National parks, we used to go out to… one thing we started doing in in the 90s, we had a, we shared a house in Sedona, AZ with Terri's sister and her husband. And we would go out to Lake Powell and houseboat a couple of times a year. And I'm not sure if you’re familiar with Lake Powell, it's basically the Colorado River dammed. OK and so we do that, and this and that's really I would have to say is our favorite National Park. But we've, other ones you know have been very interesting. You know, we've traveled. A lot of them are just state historic or National Historic sites done a lot of the Civil War battlefields. Vicksburg was particularly fascinating. We went down to Tuskegee Institute in Alabama. We've done all the southeast, the Everglades, and Fort Sumter. Really, it's hard to say. Another really beautiful one, though, is Arcadia up in northern Maine, which is right on the Canadian border on the Atlantic and it's just gorgeous.

Mr. Chase: OK. Well, I'll have to add Arcadia to my To Do List then because I'm pretty big into parks myself. I was Boy Scout for many, many, many years.

Mr. Freerks: Oh really? My dad was a Boy Scout leader and I didn't quite, it's much to his chagrin. I got up to, I guess I got up to 16 or 17 merit badges and then I was swimming more and more, and my dad kept egging me on. That might have been my rebellious stage because. So I didn't finish it up. You know, I wish I would have, but I didn't. So, I ended up just a Lifer with the like 17 Merit Badges.

Mr. Chase: Do you remember what troop you were in?

Mr. Freerks: I was in Troop 312.

Mr. Chase: OK, I was Troop 360.

Mr. Freerks: (indiscernible) I'm sorry?

Mr. Chas: I'm sorry, I was in Toop 360. And then you were going to say something?

Mr. Freerks: Was that in Kirkwood?

Mr. Chase: I was in Glendale, so right next to, we were in the basement in North Glendale.

Mr. Freerks: Yeah, but we live in Glendale right now.

Mr. Chase: Oh okay.

Mr. Freerks: Yeah, it was fun. My dad, my dad was quite a character. He was, He became the Boy Scout leader for my brother who did get his Eagle Scout, which was always mooned over my head. But it was very interesting because I don't know if. You know the history of Kirkwood, but there was an area called Meacham Park. Are you familiar with that? OK, well, Meacham Park was unincorporated, and it's where the African American community basically resided. It was, just one of those pockets. And they were in the Kirkwood School District, but they weren't incorporated. But when my dad took over the Scout troop with my brother, he went down to the Turner School a invited, you know, the parents and the kids from the community to come to the school. And he said, you know, I have this Boy Scout Troop 312, and if any of your boys, you know, want to join the troop, they're more than welcome. So we had a whole group that that joined and they turned out to be really, really good kids.

Mr. Chase: That's good to hear. I'm just going to…

Mr. Freerks: And that was. That was like in 1965/64. So, it was really sort of at the beginning of there, in the midst of all this, you know, Civil Rights stuff that was going on.

Mr. Chase: So, let's switch gears back to UMSL here, so. Did you participate in… Sorry, did you interact with people with varying faiths or cultures during your time at UMSL? And if so, how has that kinda shaped…

Mr. Freerks: Well, when I was here, it was more, because I was, you know, going to doing the MBA and I was doing it, you know, at night, you know, most of the courses. I really didn't interact with a lot of the fellow students. It was more you'd show up to the class and then leave, you know. So, I wasn't really on campus other than in class so I really didn't develop any relationships. You know, a couple, you know, with some guys that were that I would meet that, you know, one particular fellow that I met in an econ course, who worked at Monsanto, was about it. I really didn't make too many personal relationships while I was up there.

Mr. Chase: OK. Did you pick up? Any habits, hobbies or uh? Different new passions during your time at UMSL.

Mr. Freerks: Not really, no. You know, just I just basically did the work and back to my business.

Mr. Chase: Got one more set of questions here. Where would you say you align, politically speaking?

Mr. Freerks: Well, I would say I'm probably, you know, fairly libertarian. I don't really have much adherence, if you will, to any particular political party I think. Although I would have to say that currently, I'm very disappointed in in the Democratic Party. I think their progressive ideology is very detrimental to the economic system and to America as we know it. I don't think the Republicans have much of an answer to that, which I find disappointing. I find the Republicans to be annoying in terms of, you know, much of their social positions that they take being I think not very libertarian. I mean, I think people should be allowed to do exactly what they want to do within, you know, reason of not hurting anybody. But what really, I find discouraging and I find it particularly distressing about the university system, not so much UMSL, I think you know UMSL has been very good at actually, you know, living the diversity and equity as part of their mission, not as some sort of…

Mr. Chase: A tagline or…

Mr. Freerks: Yeah, a lot of watercolor, yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean it's what they do, you know, it's not something they profess it’s what they live. But like for example, at Cornell there's a real mess now in terms of people not being allowed to speak if they don't follow certain political lines, and I find that very distressing. And what I find distressing is, I think, and I hate to be this way, but I find the Democratic Party lining up very much so with this repression of free speech and I don't like that. Republicans do it in their own way, but I don't think it's quite as aggressive. As, you know, having, you know one thing, my wife and I talked a lot about recently is, you know this, and it was especially true in the Ivy League, you know, when we had Leah Thomas compete as a quote-unquote female when he was 100% male in the NCAA swimming. And defeating, you know, women who had trained their entire life and were Olympic quality swimmers had to put up with some jackass who was ranked about 480th or 500th as a man, that says I'm a woman and he comes in and he wins the NCAA championship. I think that was actually pretty disgusting and I was very disappointed that the NCAA and the Ivy League didn't stand up and say, “this is, this is a bunch of crap.” So, you know, along those lines, I guess I'm… I don't know where you put that politically. Right?

Mr. Chase: I'd say right leaning, yeah.

Mr. Freerks: I you know, I would disagree with that. I don't know why that's right leaning. I have no issue, it. Well, I have no issue with anyone wanting, if they want to change their gender, that's, I don't care. But I don't like the idea of taking advantage of that to push women out of competitive sports, which is what's happening.

Mr. Chase: Do you think there's a solution for that or should…?

Mr. Freerks: Yes, I think if you're a biological male, you should compete, you're not being denied the right to swim or compete with the other biological males. I don't know why because you say I feel like I'm female, that that entitles you to compete in in women's events. But that has nothing to do with anything else, it has to do with the fact that it's pushing women out of sports that they've fought 50 years to be included in. As I said when Terry was swimming in 1971, there was no Title IX, there were no scholarships. You know she had to fight tooth and nail just to get, find a school where there was a women's swimming team. And to have made all that progress over the last 50 years and have a bunch of, what I think, opportunists come in and you're seeing it in many events. You're seeing it in cycling where the women are being pushed out of the money and they're these guys are coming in and winning these prizes in professional cycling. It's, I think it's terrible and I don't think that's a right or a left thing. I think that's just common sense.

Mr. Chase: OK. So, do you think a lot of schools should follow UMSL’s example then of…?

Mr. Freerks: I think UMSL is fantastic. I mean UMSL is what I think a university should be, it's designed for the students. It's designed to get them job ready. They’re open, they're caring, there's no… I've never seen any sort of discriminatory attitudes or presence on campus, you know, I don't see any animosity. And you know, some of these universities, animosity is becoming violent. And I just don't see that happening at UMSL because I think, as I said, it's a university where they live it, you know, they're not trying to, you know, showcase anything. They're just, it's all about doing the business of education and that's why Terry and I are so supportive of the university.

Mr. Chase: OK. Well, that concludes all the questions that I have for you. You ended up answering a lot of them just through discourse. So, any final closing thoughts or remarks?

Mr. Freerks: No, just like what I just said, I, you know, we're very UMSL. Well, you know, I'm very glad that's where I went and got my degree for my Masters degree. Terry was very excited. She would have gotten her PhD at UMSL, but they didn't have a program in the counseling psychology. She went to Saint Louis U for that. But no, we just, we think UMSL is very much, we hope, the future of education at other schools will recognize and follow suit. And I think it's so important for our community and the region, you know, what UMSL does for the region and the community. It's a fantastic place and I wish it was more highly recognized and I think that's coming. I think that's starting to become more and more aware within the Saint Louis region and nationally. You know, it's funny, we were at a Harris thing out at the (indiscernible) and one of the people speaking said, “you know, it's really odd that UMSL does not have the reputation in Saint Louis that it has internationally.” Which I think is a shame that that Saint Louis doesn't embrace it. I think they're doing it more, but I would like to see him embrace it more fully.

Mr. Chase: Yeah. That just actually gave me another question here like. I've never heard of any, UMSL as anything other than a “good school in Saint Louis.” What is kind of that… what is the reputation of UMSL outside of Saint Louis?

Mr. Freerks: Oh, I think it it's, you know, I know with their different programs. People are well aware of it, the Mercantile Library, for example, is international. You know, we were recently up on the Cornell campus, and we did a tour of their libraries. And the librarians there were effusive in their praise for the Mercantile Library. And I guess the same is for this Harris Foundation that from with the Missouri Botanical Garden. It’s known, you know, they bring in speakers from all over the world. And I think the Business School and the DBA program, the Cyber Security program, you know, these are all nationally recognized programs that are attracting students from all over. So, you know, other than that I can't really say other than people are becoming more and more, the people that are interested in what UMSL is doing are from all over. It's not just local anymore.

Mr. Chase: All right. Well, that concludes everything I have for you. Then I would like to thank you again for your time. Yeah, I hope you have a good day.

Mr. Freerks: OK. Well, thank you. Now, what year did you graduate from Kirk, did you go to Kirkwood High?

Mr. Chase: Yes, I did. I graduated in 2019.

Mr. Freerks: So, you're a senior or graduate?

Mr. Chase: Senior yes, I'll be graduating in December.

Mr. Freerks: And what are you studying history?

Mr. Chase: History.

Mr. Freerks: History. OK, any particular era?

Mr. Chase: Not really. I kind of bounce from time to time. I'm really attracted to military history and especially technologies like how they've affected the course of history and battles and whatnot, aviation especially. That's why I kind of sparkled a bit when you mentioned the PBY. Apparently, this is just a rumor I've heard, but the Navy might be looking into a renewed contract for a modernized version of the PBY. Yeah. So that's probably something to keep an eye on.

Mr. Freerks: You know, on one of our National Park trips, we went through, you know, Southeastern or I guess would be Southwest Panhandle. We went to Pensacola, where my dad trained, and we went through the museum, and they had a cross section of a PBY. And I had no idea how big they were I mean, they had, I don't…

Mr. Chase: Oh, they were massive.

Mr. Freerks: Know how many were in the crew, but it was. It was in double digit. I mean they must have had 10-15 people on those planes.

Mr. Chase: Yeah, I think typically. Sorry, I think typically it was a crew of about… yeah, 8 to 10 guys, but they could. It could serve as liaison, anti torpedoes, scouting, or anti-submarine. But they were really the workhorse of the Navy back in World War 2.

Mr. Freerks: Yeah. Yeah, it was a shame up in, you know, he was in based in in Dutch Harbor, as I said. He said they lost so many pilots due to the weather. And it was just awful, just awful. The fog, and the clouds. But he made it through the entire war. So, thank goodness for that.

Mr. Chase: Yeah. All right. Any final, final closing thoughts?

Mr. Freerks: No, I think we, I think you heard enough of my philosophies.

Mr. Chase: All right. Well, I'm going to end the recording here then.