Johanna S. Frauen

is honored with a Brick from Dottie J. Daves.

Johanna Schultz Frauen - my mother, my heroine - is a remarkable, vivacious, intelligent, joyful woman. She was raised by the liberal and freeing philosophy: "All things are possible to those who love God." Harmony, joy, and a universe of possibilities was the legacy bestowed to Johanna Schultz Frauen by her loving mother, Mary Murray Schultz, to whom she credits her successes in life. My mother Johanna, like her mother Mary, lives this philosophy as a loving mother, supportive wife, and honored educator.

Johanna Schultz married Paul H. Frauen in 1949. She graduated magna cum laude, with a BA in modern languages and secondary education from Hastings College in Hastings, Nebraska. After graduation she began her teaching career. In December of 1951, she was blessed with her first child, and her teaching career was interrupted as she supported her husband's career, while transferring from city to city. Johanna moved, and had babies, every eighteen months between 1951 and 1956, substitute teaching between births and moves. With the birth of her fifth child in 1961, Johanna settled for thirteen years in Wichita, Kansas.

While in Wichita, Johanna resumed her teaching career at Brooks Junior High School. She thoroughly enjoyed teaching, and her students, my contemporaries at the time, thought she was the "coolest teacher." Unlike most mothers of teenagers who are referred to as "So and So's mom", I was proudly known as "Mrs. Frauen's daughter." While teaching at Brooks Junior High, mother began her interest in using multimedia to help her English students learn. In 1971, she wrote a grant and received a videotape recorder, camera, and monitor to enable her students to report news, weather and sports about Brooks Junior High. Although school newspapers were common at this time, school news broadcasts were a rarity! Mother's progressive thinking, and acceptance of change, enabled her to adapt her teaching to future technological advances, later integrating computers, VCRs, and the Internet into her classroom curriculum.

Although mother followed my father's career through four successive moves, she continued teaching and receiving honors along the way. During her 35 year teaching career, she was Liberty High School 1978 Teacher of the Year, as well as Pickens County's representative, and one of five finalists in the South Carolina State Teacher of the Year Awards. In 1995, at West Orange Ninth Grade Center, Orange County Florida, she again received the Teacher of the Year designation, and was recognized for her use of many forms of media, while teaching her students to achieve and learn.

Mother excelled in her teaching career, however this did not diminish her ability to find the time and energy to shower her five children with love and support. She appreciated, respected, and nurtured the unique, exceptional, qualities in each of us. As grown adults, we each declare, "Mom loved me best!" By example, mother taught her children to be accepting of others, encouraged us to recognize the good in everyone, and reaffirmed her mother's teachings that we are all God's children, and therefore, perfect. For mother, education was a given, and she and my father sacrificed to enable all of their five children to graduate from state universities. As an educator herself, mother considers this one of her greatest accomplishments.

Today, as a working mother of two children, I have a clear appreciation of the exceptional woman my mother truly is. The days I struggle with my own career and motherhood, I have my mother's example to follow; knowing that the juggling act required to excel in both is truly possible. Following her mother's lead, Johanna Schultz Frauen - my mother, my heroine - joyfully prepared me to be a responsible, contributing member of society, accepting of change and all the possibilities available in life. I am deeply grateful for the lessons taught to me by my mother, and for the love and support she continues to provide.

September 11, 1998