A Brief Autobiography

Birth to Grade School

I'm a native Texan. But don't ask me much about Texas. My dad was stationed at Shepard Air Force Base in Wichita Falls when I was born. Just under a year later he mustered out and went to college at Emmanuel Missionary College (now Andrews University) in Berrien Springs, Michigan. There he studied to be a preacher, and took a position in Escanaba (in Michigan's Upper Peninsula) when he graduated in 1959.

During the summers between dad's college work we moved to my grandparents home in Cedar Lake, Michigan where my dad sold books. Grandfather had gotten a bulldozer to work a hole into the ground on his farm so it would collect water for the cattle to drink. Soil in that part of Michigan is very rocky, so the pile next to the hole had plenty of rocks boys like my younger brother and me just loved to throw into the water. One day my younger brother went alone, fell into the water, and drowned.

A sister was born just a month or so before my dad graduated from EMC. That left a four-and-a half year gap between me and my nearest-in-age sibling. Over the years three more siblings (boy and girl twins, and the youngest boy) arrived. Here's a quick family roster:

• Autumn Frase (me), Malvern, AR
• Rhona Brown, Columbus, OH
• Lester Frase, San Diego, CA (deaf)
• Esther Erb, Carlisle, PA
• Jonathan Frase, Northglenn, CO

Grade School

After less than a year at Escanaba we moved north to Marquette. My parents believed children should be free of school for as long as legally possible. My birthday fell shortly after school started, so I was kept out until I was nearly seven. Then my mother took some home study courses so she would be eligible to teach me at home. Before this started, however, I'd so bugged my mother about wanting to read that she'd gotten me some books from the library. By that evening I'd read them all and wanted more. I don't remember "learning" to read.

I completed the prescribed first grade studies by January, when we moved to Mio, Michigan where the church sponsored a school. The teacher, Forest Halverson, agreed to let me begin second grade work when I started school there. That got me back in line with my peers who had started a year earlier. We stayed in Mio for a year and a half.

We moved to Mississippi in the summer of '63 (I remember because that's about when the '64 Chevrolet came out with it's bold double trim on the side). I did fourth and fifth grade at a school associated with the church-sponsored high school, did sixth grade at home, and did seventh grade at a school my mother taught in our home town of Hattiesburg, Mississippi. We then moved to Brookhaven, Mississippi where I finished grade school.

High School

I started high school at the church-sponsored school mentioned earlier, Bass Memorial Academy. The school was named after a wealthy man who raised pecans in the area. The school was built on a pecan orchard and the buildings were laid out to disturb as few of the trees as possible. I did ninth grade and the first nine weeks of tenth grade there. Then my dad took a pastorate in Provo, Utah.

I got sent to a church-sponsored school in Caldwell, Idaho: Gem State Academy. Meanwhile the wheels were turning in Provo to start an alternative high school. As my dad was involved in the project, I went whether I wanted to or not. Castle Valley Academy (it was called "Institute" in those days) set up shop in the valley below Castle Rock (a rock on which Chevrolet had shot a commercial in 1966). It was not an accredited school so while I learned a lot there, I didn't have any paper to prove it. I finished my studies in 1972 after almost dropping out at the end of 11th grade.

Weird Places

Castle Valley was associated with another non-accredited school in Colorado named Eden Valley Institute. Following a spiritual conversion experience I decided (possibly misguidedly) to attend Eden Valley. I sort of finished their three-year program, but I'd made so much trouble along the way that they'd shipped me off to an evangelistic outpost in Gunnison Colorado. While in Gunnison I landed my first job in radio. But I decided to join my folks at the Monument Valley Mission and Hospital only to discover, when I arrived, that they were about to move to Michigan again.

So I went with them to Michigan, couldn't take the cloudy winter, and spent January through March of 1976 in Dove Creek, Colorado. Dove Creek is the pinto bean capital of the U. S. and I stayed on a pinto bean farm owned by Wilmer Dicken. He paid me when I worked as an electrician's apprentice, and I earned my room and board when I worked on the farm.

Back in Michigan I got a job pumping gas, worked briefly for the state headquarters of the church in the print shop, landed a part-time job in radio, and got an opportunity to do what I thought must be the mission intended for me, religious broadcasting. The chance came at WFUR, Grand Rapids. This commercial religious station could avoid the on-air begging I found distasteful in the other religious stations in the area. But I learned in a baptism of fire that constituted my first on-air shift that they had very strict standards for what music you were to play out of a library that was essentially unmarked. Along with that they announced that I would work only two nights a week instead of the four advertised with the job. I wimped out and quit, earning zero dollars for the week I'd spent in training.

Shortly after this the local station at which I worked part-time offered me the morning drive shift at a 50,000 watt FM station licensed to Grand Rapids. How I got such a prime spot is a long story, having to do with the fact that sale of the station was pending in a few months. I chose not to put in for a job with the new owner and got an essentially full-time slot at the local station after the sale went through.

Meanwhile Mom had convinced me to check out attending college. Andrews University had opened a college of technology which offered two-year certification courses in a number of areas. Based on experiences at Eden Valley I thought I might get a course in diesel mechanics. I filled out an application in the fall of '76, got accepted to the college of arts and sciences, and never got around to changing it. It wasn't until near the end of my second year that I thought at all seriously about actually finishing a bachelor's degree. But lacking any other things to do I continued with college work and graduated with a bachelor of arts degree in 1981.

Then I needed a full-time job. A brief stint at KBAT in Midland, Texas didn't work out because of a schedule that conflicted with my religious convictions. I did a number of things before getting a job at WATS-AM/WAVR-FM in Sayre, Pennsylvania. After fourteen months there I got a job as news director at WACK-AM in Newark, New York, a small town about an hour southeast of Rochester. I held that job full-time for over three years. Then a preacher convinced me I should be doing something other than radio. I continued part-time at WACK while I took up graduate studies at SUNY Geneseo. Three semesters (two in classes and one in student teaching) got me what I needed for New York elementary certification and a start on a master's degree.

After the student teaching I put in to do substitute teaching in several districts around where I lived. I continued subbing from February of '88 to May of '89, taking a temporary position at Crosman Airgun during the summer. (If you bought a 760 Pumpmaster manufactured that summer there's about an even chance I rifled the barrel.)

Then, through a connection with my dad's employer, I got a teaching job in a church school in Marquette, Michigan. I was teacher/principal in this one-room school with 6 to 11 students. During Christmas break of that first year I went to Arkansas to marry a woman I'd met through a church-oriented computer dating service.

After three years the Marquette church ran out of money to operate the school, and my superintendant arranged for me to interview at the school in Mio, MI. I continued to attend summer school while teaching and earned a master's degree in curriculum and instruction in 1995. After four years of teaching at Mio a situation arose where someone in the church was campaigning to have me ousted. It seemed pretty obvious they were trying to make an opening for a family member, and the board would have "hired" me for another year, but my wife and I felt it was time to leave.

The prospects in Michigan didn't look that good, and a friend of my wife's had connected us to an opening in Rochester, New York. I took the position, we moved into a luxury townhouse fairly close to the school, and I got in over my head. For some reason I can't explain even today I suffered from extreme levels of emotional stress. Having already decided teaching (at least elementary teaching) didn't suit me well, I finally decided to resign the position and return to Michigan. I finished out the '96-'97 school year subbing around Mio, and didn't get around to serious job hunting until late April or early May of '97. By August I still had no job, our house sold, and we decided to move to my in-law's house in Malvern.

I subbed three days in the Malvern schools, and finally landed a temporary job at CENTRIA, in Sheridan, which is about 25 miles away. I didn't expect to even get a permanent job, and certainly didn't expect to be doing the kinds of things I do there now. We're still getting on our feet financially, but this job is something I enjoy, even when the stress level gets high.

In October of '98 I got a call from KAAY-AM, a 50,000 watt station in Little Rock. Known in the '70s as the "Mighty Ten-Ninety" it was the powerhouse rock station in town. It is now a religious station which plays a lot of paid programs and, when it has none of those, inspirational music. I did the midnight to eight A. M. shift on Sunday mornings until a few months ago. Now I do six A. M. to two P. M. Sunday. From midnight to local sunrise our signal reaches north into Canada and south into Central America. I had long wanted to work an overnight shift on a powerful AM station like KAAY. It doesn't mean as much now as it would have twenty years ago, but it's still a lot of fun.