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Frank: A Window in Time

by Max :: Monday April 10, 2006

One of the great things about Thacher is the opportunity the school gives each student to interact with the outside world. From Cultural Weekend to a unique faculty-sponsered trip, students regularly have the opportunity to venture out into the Santa Barbara, Ventura, and Los Angeles counties and learn something new.

Although not as elaborate as a trip to L.A. or Santa Barbara, I drive into Ojai every Sunday night to do about an hour of community service at Acacias Care Center. My time at Acacias every week usually consists of a slow walk through the halls with another student or two with the occasional stop at a room to converse with a resident. A lot of the time the residents are pretty out of it and subdued because of medication, which can make the experience substantially somber. Once in a while, however, you meet a person who absolutely loves to talk and provides insight into a generation and time much older than mine. This was the case with Frank.

I’ve never met anyone quite like Frank. The man is 93-years-old, coming off two strokes, and without a family, but you wouldn’t know it when talking to him. Speaking with only a slight slur, Frank frequently tells me anecdotes about his time on an airforce base in Russia during World War II, and these stories, combined with the documentations he let me read about his travels to almost all the states in the US and to countries such as Israel, Egypt, Italy, and Spain, astound me. I’ve talked to Frank about subjects ranging from football to politics. He especially loves fighter planes and has many pictures of different models in an album of newspaper clippings he has kept since the ‘70’s.

Frank opens my eyes every week. I never thought I would ever develop an actual relationship with a resident at Acacias, but every week when I arrive he invites me into his room and we begin to talk. My community service experience has truly been rewarding.

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