LYNN BRANAKA FREMUTH

Prescott, Arizona

Spouse: Chas

Children:  Contentedly child-free

Education:  1970 to 1972 - Eastern Michigan University / 1972 to present - diligent autodidact

Bio:
After graduation, I put Seaholm behind me with no regrets. A week after throwing my mortar board as far away as I could, fellow ‘70 classmate, Chas Fremuth, asked me out on a date. We laughed a lot. And, as the Hollies sang, by August he was mine.

I was accepted at the last minute to EMU. I had no burning desire to attend college, but my dad told me it was either that, or “peel lettuce at the A&P,” and pay rent to live at home. So, no fool, off I went.

Dorm life did not turn out to be the source of “lasting friendships” my mom assured me it would be. I disliked college almost as much as high school. I battled the Freshman Fifteen, with varying degrees of success. I put my mind to expending as little effort as humanly possible studying. Basically, I continued my lifelong habit of being an underachiever. Still, I managed to make the dean’s list every semester, which just proved to me how little I needed to study to be a successful student at EMU.

I sneaked away - literally - to Princeton University to visit Chas whenever I could, taking advantage of $58 round-trip student standby airfares from Metro to Newark. I also took advantage of EMU’s new and controversial (!) policy of not informing parents when a “coed” ( such a quaint word) got a prescription for The Pill. I’ll leave all inferences to the reader.

After two years of subterfuge and elaborate schemes, enlisting my reluctant roommates to cover for me if my parents phoned when I was in another state staying in my boyfriend’s dorm room, I applied for transfer to Rutgers in New Jersey. My parents said, “No.” So much for those dean’s list grades.  

Chas, during a phone call from Princeton in May 1972, said if they wouldn’t let me go to Rutgers, then we should just get married. Not exactly on his knee, asking for my hand, but as a proposal, it had a certain rebellious snap to it. 

Take that, Mom and Dad!

Six weeks later, at the insistence of all four of our parents, we endured a small church wedding ceremony and reception, which gave my parents the excuse (as if they needed one) to get stinking drunk. I invited two guests: my best friends since Derby days, Tina Tracey and Mary Ellen Gardner.  

Chas and I loaded all our earthly belongings into our 1960 Chevy Impala’s endless trunk, and headed off for our one-night Niagara Falls honeymoon on our way back to Princeton, where we were forced to live in exile off-campus for the next two years. There was no undergrad married housing, which was the university’s way to discourage undergrads’ getting married. 

Chas studied and worked hard. I worked at Firestone Library in the Rare Books and Manuscripts department, and kept house. Baked bread. Traditional domestic bliss.

Forty-eight years later, Chas and I are still married. And we still laugh a lot. But I don't bake bread.

Following Chas’s graduation from Princeton, we went here and there, living a peripatetic life with our dog, Lyx, until 1977. We held the usual post-college slacker jobs: waitress and bartender. Chas wrote poetry. I made drawings. We smoked lots of dope. We listened to rock and roll and went to concerts. Everything we owned could fit in the back of our ‘67 Ford Econoline van, which had replaced the Impala. We were, in The Who’s words, “going mobile.”  

Still reading?  

Here’s where I should start talking about our wonderful kids, and all of their achievements, which make me so proud, and of the delightful grandchildren they produced, who are the absolute smartest and most adorable kids on the planet.

But we are child-free by choice, and all we had were dogs. For several years, I was close to being a big fish in the small pond world of Australian Shepherds. I trained, showed and bred some champions. I learned how to herd sheep and cattle. Being "in dogs" was a hobby I really loved. Our current dog, Brim, is the last of the line of dogs I bred.

In the fall of 1978, after earning his Masters at U of M, Chas embarked on his 39-year career at Detroit Country Day School. We won a Plymouth Reliant in 1982 in a Coca-Cola contest. That was a big deal because we were living on a teacher’s salary. Our one regular date was every other Friday (payday), when we went to Alban's cafeteria for dinner. We bought a 1919 duplex in downtown Birmingham in 1984, and became landlords. I entered fifteen years of employment in the Birmingham Public School system, serving in several capacities, including office assistant and noon supervisor at Derby. I can tell you, the first time I walked into Derby again, it smelled the same as it did in 1964 – the Proustian essence of chalk dust, old textbooks, mimeograph fluid, and greasy cafeteria food. 

We “moved on up” to Bloomfield Township in 1990. We watched as the Birmingham we’d known since the 50s disappeared behind corporate logos, highrise-multi-purpose monstrosities, and BigFoot houses. Eventually, I rarely bothered going “uptown” anymore.

We managed to stay together and solvent. We had a pool, so we staycationed before staycations were a thing. We traveled some – I more than Chas, because my sister enjoyed my company and invited me along on some her journeys. I’ve been from Alaska to Tasmania, from Hawaii to Albania. I have not, however, watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhauser Gate. Maybe next year.

I’ve done some art. I’ve painted some paintings. I’ve taken thousands of photographs. I hike. I read. I appreciate nature. I still have – and wear – some clothes I had in high school. I indulge my insatiable curiosity daily. I question everything. 

Fast forward through decades of our shared experiences, which we all view through a different lens. The years passed, as they are wont to do. I don’t need to elaborate on that. We’re all wrinkled now.  

After being more or less uninterested in all things political for most of my adult life, because it didn’t seem like it made any difference who got elected, November 4, 2008, made me believe that finally, maybe, our country was evolving. The first black president! In my lifetime! I felt the long-slumbering hippie sensibility in me re-awaken. “C’mon people now, smile on your brother.” “What’s so funny ‘bout peace, love, and understanding?” 

Silly me. I got fooled again.

On November 9, 2016, the United States elected a narcissistic sociopath. If I believed in demons, I’d have said they’d been let loose. If I believed in a god, I’d pray for our country. Instead, I started speaking out and participating in political demonstrations, the hippie in me now fully revived, ready, willing, and well-equipped to make neatly-lettered protest signs.

I joined with the students at the March for Our Lives demonstration in Detroit.  

Chas retired, and in the summer of 2018 we relocated to a red (but turning purpler by the day!) state, Arizona, where I’ve joined with other progressively-minded folks in marches around the Prescott Courthouse square to support liberal ideals and defend our constitutional republic. We’re here. We’re going to annoy you. Get used to it. 

I am now currently complying with the pandemic-abatement guidelines. I’m doing my part. It’s the least I can do, even though millions of others here in Arizona have chosen to do nothing, and feel smug about it.

I feel very fortunate to be spending quarantine in splendid isolation with my best friend of fifty years, Chas, both of us in good health, surrounded by a big sky, breathing clean air, in a place I can walk miles every day with my dog, looking at mountains in the distance. I often open my eyes to the most amazing sunrises, which puts it all into perspective for me. Another day, and I'm still kickin'.

I recall, as a teenager, feeling ashamed, but annoyed, whenever I heard folks our parents’ age talk about living through the depression, and speak of the sacrifices they were willing to make because they wanted their kids to have a better life.  

And now, here we are.

What a long, strange road it’s been.

My photos:
Tina Tracey (Downey), me, and Mary Ellen Gardner at Chas's and my wedding, June 24, 1972 / As some of you may have last seen me, outside our Birmingham duplex before the 20th reunion, 1990 / Chas and me with our Australian Shepherd, Brim, outside our new home in Prescott, Arizona, Christmas day 2018 / There I am, looking like a native Westerner in my shearling jacket, demonstrating on Prescott's Courthouse Square for the impeachment of President Trump / My sister, Marlis (Class of '67) and me before Cher's performance in Las Vegas, March, 2019