Oral History Transcript - Frederick H Fahringer - October 22, 1986
Interview with Dr. Frederick H. Fahringer Jr.
Interviewer: Bradley Alan Johnson
Transcriber: Bradley Alan Johnson
Date of Interview: October 22, 1986
Location: His office, Texas State University, San Marcos, TX
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Begin Tape 1, Side 1
Bradley Alan Johnson: Don’t you love these? [Tape recorder]
Frederick H. Fahringer Jr.: You have a backup, too.
Johnson: Yeah, thought I would be careful, I thought I would make sure—a little safety there.
Fahringer: That’s okay!
Johnson: Well, okay, basically on your background—okay, where were you basically born?
Fahringer: You know, it’s really Frederick H. Fahringer Jr.
Johnson: Junior?
Fahringer: I was born in Chicago, Illinois; in a big hospital there in Chicago, Illinois. My father was going to the Baptist Theological Center to be a minister. Not Southern Baptist but Northern Baptist, which is a very similar congregation, and I was the second. I had a brother. He was a year and nine months older, I was the second going to Chicago, but I left immediately when I was still, like six months old, and moved to Wisconsin, Milwaukee. And that’s where I grew up for the next fifteen years.
Johnson: Let me check these real quick. I don’t know—okay, sorry about the interruption.
Fahringer: That’s alright. (Sympathetic)
Johnson: Okay, what kind of community did you grow up in Chicago?
Fahringer: Well, it wasn’t really Chicago because we left Chicago right away. My father became the minister of the Underwood Memorial Baptist Church of Wauwatosa, Wisconsin.
Johnson: Oh, boy.
Fahringer: That’s the center of Milwaukee. Oh, gosh it was something; artesian well water. Not a black, not even a Jewish person in that community. It was very beautiful—no industry at all. Just beautiful homes and just a very rich lovely community, and being a minister’s son, we were the poorest family in the whole city, I’m sure. And so, we never locked the doors in our house—doors are always open. Kids my age were right on the same street. I didn’t live far from school; I walk to—just absolutely perfect. I don’t think there was ever any crime; I don’t remember having any crime being committed in Wauwatosa. (Both laugh)
I don’t remember anything about that; I just thought everybody was wonderful and nice. I never saw any blacks because no blacks were allowed. They didn’t have any Jewish people living in that town.
Johnson: How do you spell Wauwatosa?
Fahringer: It’s spelled W-A-U-W-A-T-O-S-A. You see, that’s a suburb of Milwaukee; the others are called Waukesha, Whitefish Bay, Shorewood, and they were all very ritzy suburbs of Milwaukee. Milwaukee was kind of rough. No, it was beautiful [Wauwatosa]. I stayed there until I graduated from high school. My father stayed at the church—a really good minister. He never preached against anything. (Pause) He preached for things, you know, he was a real positive thinker. He was a hell of an athlete!
I was a football and basketball player. In fact, I was an all-state in basketball and football, and got scholarship offers to go to several smaller universities in Wisconsin. But my father said the most important thing was that when I grow up, he said, “You can’t find a hundred guys to play football and basketball, you have got to play some games you can play all your life.” So, as much as I hated, he would make me get up early every morning, and he taught me to play golf and tennis. These two things have been the most wonderful things in my life. I have about an eight handicap in golf, and I play tennis and racquetball and beat most people half my age. But I hated it! My old man made me get up at seven o’clock in the morning before school (both laugh) and he taught me how to play. So that’s the main thing I remember as being an athlete in high school.
Grades were, oh god, (strong injection) they were awful. It didn’t bother me very much because I was a good athlete, and then I got scholarship offers, but I didn’t go to them. I didn’t take anything in Wisconsin, and then my father and mother both graduated from Bucknell University in Pennsylvania—Lewisburg, Pennsylvania—under an all coeducational educational institute of cultural elite. They heard about me and offered me a scholarship.
My brother was already going there; I have a brother, he’s an actor. So in fact, he even played football and basketball. He played four years—three years, he couldn’t play his freshman year.
Johnson: What was the name of the college again?
Fahringer: Bucknell.
Johnson: How do you spell that?
Fahringer: B-U-C-K-N-E-L-L—the leading coeducational educational institute in the country. It was a marrying school, but I missed that. The funny thing is I never been back there. I graduated in 1942. (Pause) I’ve never been back. Now, I have flown over, because you know I was a pilot, and I looked down there.
Johnson: So, did you major in psychology?
Fahringer: No, you see the head of the psychology department would not let a football player take psychology (laughs). He’s just not going to have them in there! But I had a girlfriend who said, “This guy is different, he can read and write and may be alright.” So he said he would make an exception. He permitted me to take psychology courses, but he wouldn’t let me major in it. The only “A’s” I got were in psychology—everything else was “Cs” and “Ds.”
Johnson: What actually did you major while you were there?
Fahringer: I majored in English. I used that because that was as close to psychology. In English, they would let you do all the psychology courses.
Then the big war came in December, and so I joined the Air Force. Never been in or known anything about airplanes, but I heard the girls like pilots (humorously). Didn’t feel like being in the trenches; gosh, I had seen pictures from World War I. And so right after college I didn’t have any chance to get a job, I went straight into the military. That’s when I hit Texas.
Johnson: What year was that when you actually came into Texas?
Fahringer: In, ah, it must have been in the spring of May–June of 1942.
Johnson: Where were you based at?
Fahringer: They put me out at Lackland, which is up the hill from Kelly. That was the preflight school for aviation cadets, guys going to learn how to be pilots and officers. I stayed in Texas then, about, I guess that was six weeks, then left and went to flying school. I went to St. Louis and Illinois for primary. Enid, Oklahoma for basic. Lake Charles, Louisiana for advanced, and then everybody was all ready to go. At that time, I was ready to get my whole butt shot off for the country. We were ready to go, and I was one of the top graduates in the class. I’ll never forget that day (reflecting back) when we were all lined up. We were getting our assignments, and everybody gets assigned to a fighter plane squadron. I’m waiting—when your name was called, you leave the formation. We were all brand-new second lieutenants with our wings, and all of a sudden, I’m the only one standing there. “Second Lieutenant Frederick H. Fahringer will report to Randolph Air Force Base and become an instructor.” God, I thought I would die! (Laughs)
So, I came to Texas in December of ’42, and I ended up in Houston for a year where I taught flying, single engine, gunnery, twin engine. Keep volunteering to go to combat but they never let me go. They open a new base in Waco, Texas; it’s called Blackburn, I believe, so they sent me up to Waco. I went up to Waco, and I was still an instructor. Finally, got promoted to Captain—now I have got so much flying time they don’t want me killed in the war. They really don’t, they say, You have too much flying time, you’re too good a pilot. We have got to save you. So I ended up flying ferry command plane. I flew aerovac hospital ships and all this kind of stuff. I got very little combat other than going in and out of the zones. It just turned out that I had so much flying time that they didn’t want me shot down; there weren’t that many pilots with that kind of flying time. Because guys were getting killed when we went over there, and, you know, a hundred airplanes would go and fifty would come back. Then there weren’t that many pilots. It was a tough going. I mean, the Germans weren’t so frightened of the bombs, I think they were frightened of the airplanes falling on them. But then I finished that and I came back. I didn’t get back to Texas until ‘46.
Johnson: How much longer were you in the Air Force before you retired?
Fahringer: I stayed just until I could get out. I wanted to get out as quickly as I could. I had about three thousand dollars, which was a lot of money in those days. But I had no job, so what I did was, I sat down and picked the twenty men that I thought were the most successful in the United States. I wrote them a letter, and I said, “I’m not looking for a job. I would just like to talk to you. I’m going to be in that area at a certain time, and I would call on you if you would see me. I would appreciate it.” It was just my idea of trying to find out what I wanted to do.
Twelve out of the twenty saw me; out of the twelve, ten of them offered me a job. I picked the President of Marion Steam Shovel Company because it was so large. I picked the Head of the Motion Picture Bureau. So, I spent all my money traveling all over the United States, and I finally got a job with a very large insurance company—that started me off as an executive. Sent me back East and started me way up on the top. The Air Force called me back and offered me a regular commission, and I was making awfully good money. My wife was interested in returning to the Air Force and I thought, “What the hell!”
I took a salary cut, if you can imagine, and went back into the Air Force. I have never really been sorry, Brad. I could have been president of the company someday, you know what I mean? I never think about that, I just think about the good life I did have in the Air Force and how much I enjoyed it. I really did; I lived everywhere. I lived in almost every state in the Union: Colorado—name it, California, San Francisco, Alabama, back in Washington, New York, Wisconsin—name it. I have had exciting jobs and some exciting friends.
Johnson: What jobs did you have when you were recommisioned; were you just a fighter pilot?
Fahringer: Yeah, I just came back as a pilot and went to New Orleans, Louisiana. Opened up a base in New Orleans, Louisiana, and again, I got so much flying time I got to train people. So I began training reserve pilots because we were letting these guys out of the service and they wanted to keep them trained. So, I trained reserve pilots there, and then they sent me to Barksdale, Louisiana, and I trained them there. Then they sent me to Japan, and I flew F-51s, and stayed there through Korea.
I guess the most interesting job I had was when I became what you call a legislative liaison officer—which is a lobbyist for the Air Force. I had an office in the United States Senate and boondoggle around the world, and that was for six or seven years.
Then they sent me to London [Air Force]. I did international lobbying for another six years. All that time I was out of uniform; when I came back to the states to retire after several years, I didn’t even have a uniform to retire. (Laughs) I missed my own retirement ceremony because I didn’t want to buy a uniform just to retire.
So that was interesting, and then from there, you know, of course, I was in and out of Texas all that time—flying. Hell, this was flying Randolph, Kelly, Brooks, and all those bases. I would be in and out of Texas a lot, and when I can think of all the chances to make money back in San Antonio. Couple of my friends did and then came back here, and uh. My wife is basically from San Antonio; her mother lived here, her father was killed in the war. He was a colonel with MacArthur in the Philippines. We came back here just temporarily, and then I went back to school.
Hell, the next thing that happened was Dr. Stimmel, who was the chairman, and I was taking a couple courses just to refresh myself on psychology. He stopped me in the hall and said, “Would you be interested in teaching a course?” (Smiling) I thought, Why not, and I did. Is it still going? [Recorder]
Johnson: Yeah, I’m just checking it.
Fahringer: Then I taught, [which] apparently they liked, so he said, “Will you teach two courses next semester?” I said sure. Then he came back and said, “Will you teach three courses?” I said yeah. Then he said, “Will you go full time?” And I thought, “What the heck.” I couldn’t afford the salary; I mean the salary is so small. But I was a getting a very delightful retirement from the Air Force, which helped. Then I started a private practice, and I’m just doing that for after school. So, I have been in Texas for the past, I think, twelve years now. I have been here at Southwest for ten. I watched it grow—it has really grown in these ten years. [The campus]
Johnson: Have you noticed a lot of not only campus, but myself, I have seen the campus grow in the past year. Your racial percentages—have you seen a lot more Hispanics and blacks?
Fahringer: Yeah, and not only have I seen a lot more, they have been a lot smarter. They have been better students, very good. They feel better about themselves. And the blacks too, I mean this is what I have really enjoyed (smiling). They have been more confident and better students. I remember when I first came (sigh), I felt so sorry for them; I was spoon-feeding them; I was doing everything to help. I don’t feel that way now. They are really holding their own. I was noticing the other day, a couple of my Mexicans were some of the highest grades in my class. They really pleased me because they weren’t spoon-fed, I didn’t do any extras for them.
I have a soft feeling for athletes since I went to school on an athlete scholarship and know how tough it is. That is tough. I had to play basketball and football, which meant every day of my life. Spring football, spring basketball. One season and then the other. When football season was over, I remember playing my junior year, we played the University of Pennsylvania in football. In the snow and the rain on Thanksgiving Day, and everybody got a ticket to go home, and I lived in Wisconsin, my parents did. I got a ticket to Madison Square Garden where the basketball team was playing basketball. I had not touched a basketball, I hadn’t been near the basketball and got there; they suited me up, and the coach starts me. (Laughs) I started every basketball game for Bucknell for three years; started every one! Even when I came out of football without any practice.
Johnson: What positions did you play in football?
Fahringer: I was a forward in basketball, really sort of a point guard is now, because I was five-ten. We had these six-foot-eight giants surrounding me. Of course, I played quarterback in football. Didn’t like football at all; football was fun in high school, but in the university it was tough!
Johnson: Can you still fly today?
Fahringer: No, we owned an airplane for a while but I gave up. See (pause), if you look at all these accidents that happen, they’re all amateurs. These guys are amateurs (stressed). I mean, I remember a guy who right here in this town that did something he told me about and I thought, “Why in the hell is he flying?” I checked because I knew another guy out there. The guy had like something like seventy hours of flying time. He decided to fly back from Corpus Christi to San Marcos at night in rain. And he almost killed himself out here; there is no way he could cope with it.
I won’t fly unless I can fly enough hours so that I can really stay current. I used to fly for the airlines too, for a short period of time. Flying, of course, is not like driving a car; I mean, these guys think they are so good, and I can’t understand it. I have eight to nine thousand hours, and they will do a thing in their plane that I won’t consider doing. I won’t even consider doing some of the things that they are doing! So if I can’t fly and keep my proficiency well up; teaching, private practice, and there is no time to keep up. I have two clients with airplanes right here, one in Seguin and another one in a little town down here called Hope or something. And another one in New Braunfels. All these guys have airplanes; they all would like to have me work with them on flying. An example, like instrument flying, and all the extra stuff. As a result, I can have their airplanes and use them. I have turned them down because I don’t want to get involved with flying unless I can do it sufficiently. If I wouldn’t fly a minimum of ten to twelve hours a month, I would feel very uncomfortable. You’re always taking someone with you, and your record shows Colonel in the Air Force, Command Pilot, ten thousand hours. They wouldn’t know how unsafe they were (humorously), you know, so I don’t do that anymore. We sold the airplane; well, I sold my part of the airplane. Now, I feel quite comfortable in the back end of an airliner, most of those guys are about my age anyway. Half of the guys I know, and you know, pour the gin and tonic and take it boys, I trust them.
Johnson: Why did you decide to settle here in San Marcos?
Fahringer: I really didn’t, what happened was I wanted to take—somebody told me about San Marcos, and I wanted to take a course in psychology, just a refresher because I hadn’t had much psychology in the past couple of years. So, it was late, and registration was over, and then somebody said, “I think you can still get into Southwest, they have late registration.” So I just came up here and found a class, and I think it was with Pete Hardesty. Something like Adolescent Psychology, and I enjoyed it, and there were a couple of other guys here that were very, very good. Then my wife said, “I’ll come with you, that sounds like fun.” So we get in the car and drive up every Tuesday and Thursday. And, of course, we didn’t know each other then, so it was kind of fun; we were going to school, and I would say, “Let me carry your books.” We were going to school together, and oh, she was competitive. Oh, my aching butt, here I was the big psychologist who took Abnormal Psychology just as a review for me, and then on the test she got a higher mark than I did. She made my life miserable for weeks after that, and then she dropped out.
As I told you, I was just walking down the hall, and Theron Stimmel asked me if I would teach, and they liked what I did. The department was very small then, it was, just had about five or six classes. Then one, two, three, and then I went full-time, and I have been here ever since.
Johnson: What changes over the years that you have taught here in the psychology department have you seen?
Fahringer: Oh, boy, we were, ah—this place has got some top people; we have some people in this department that could be good in any university in the United States. Bob Cooper, the chairman, is nationally known; this guy is outstanding. Awards from all over. Shirley Rosenwosser, these people are—I’m saying, I don’t care where you go to school, not only in Texas but in the United States, the faculty here is—(very energetically) Rick Archer in social. Rick will be one of the finest social psychologists in the next five years in the United States. You couldn’t find better people. Oh, we have some that aren’t so good, I’m not saying that. But boy, we brought some people in there—this faculty will hold its own with any faculty in the United States, I mean it. In research, teaching abilities, educational background, all the credits you want. These guys are good, and the women are great! They really are. A kid comes out of here with a degree in psychology, he knows it (pause), he knows it (emphasized).
Good planning, they work on it here, these guys. They work to make sure it’s the best that there is. I have seen that change in time because it was so small a long time ago. I rate this place high, I mean I really do, it’s unbelievable. Wade Wheeler, industrial psychology; Wade has been an industrial psychologist. So, those are the changes that I have seen, and also we are getting more and more majors. Parents say, When you go to college and spend all this money, we want you to get your butt out of there; I want you to make a living, none of this psychology junk. They are forcing people into business and they are unhappy. Listen: there is a lot of money to be made in psychology, banks like psychologists. Why, because everybody needs “people people” now.
Some of the opportunities—talk about advanced degrees. Air Force, you are nothing with a college degree. You have to have at least a master’s degree. In business today, an MBA is all we’re looking at. So, when in psychology they say you need an advanced degree—sure you do! Just like you do in any other field.
Johnson: Are there any particular instances while you were teaching here that really stick out in your mind, like a student that later on that has really became significant or a friend that has taught here. Besides those whom you have mentioned here, or just a hilarious time that you have had in the classroom?
Fahringer: (Laughs) I don’t know, I guess my favorite story is about this girl. She was good-looking (strong emphasis), oh, and she was built. I remember just looking at her, and she really rattled my hormones. She would come to class one minute late, exactly one minute late! She was built, and she would bounce across there and sit down, and then she would lean forward—put her eyes right on me. Just look like she was worshipping me everywhere. I thought, “This is charming.” She was so magnificent, so I said something to her. I found out what her name was, so I called in my class and nothing happened. Then they poked on her, and she went this (swayed from side to side while sitting) and then she went like this—what’s wrong with her? Apparently, she was smoking pot for breakfast, and I checked her grades, and they were excellent. So I called her in, and I said, “Look you’re brilliant, and here you are smoking pot.” She said, “That’s the only reason I’m brilliant.” And then I said, “No, it’s not. I’ll tell you what I’ll do, I’ll run an IQ test on you, and with pot and without pot, and show you the difference.” Well, she couldn’t give up pot, but I finally talked her into giving it up for two days and ran a Wechsler and a Stanford Binet and showed her that she was in the top 1% in IQ. Attractive, intelligent, top 1%--”get off the pot, you can be anything in the world that you want to be.” She said, “Can I be a doctor?” “Can you be a doctor—hell yes, you can be a doctor!” She said, “Are you sure?” I said, “I’m positive.” She said, “I’ll never smoke pot again.” She never smoked another bit of pot, never took another drug, never took another drink. She transferred to UT, graduated from UT. She is now finished with her internship, and she is a number one physician in Dallas now. I hear from her regularly. (Laughts)
Johnson: Unreal.
Fahringer: It was unreal. You can’t understand, she looked at me like this (lethargic look). I thought this kid has a crush on me. She was stoned! I didn’t even know what stoned was because I grew up in a generation where we didn’t have any drugs. We drank beer in Wisconsin, of course, we lived in Milwaukee; that was the most daring thing I had done. So when it came to drugs, I was very innocent about them. I had never—I have learned here. That stands out as an example of picking someone out and could this tremendous talent could have been wasted? I wonder sometime if we’re not careful, we waste so much time. Because sometimes the kid needs the right word at the right time to change the whole person around.
Johnson: I have noticed in your class while taking it and talking to some of your colleagues and other people, you are pretty much a student-oriented teacher. You care not only for students, but at the same time you make your subject very interesting, very understandable. Is there any reason why you attribute that?
Fahringer: There is really not, you see, I shouldn’t be that way, a colonel in the Air Force, military. Back when I first came, I remember walking on the campus, and these two girls came up to me. Two cute little girls came up to me and said, Is your name Fahringer? I said, “Yes, it is.” She said, “Well, we wanted to take a course from you, but we heard something else about you.” I said, “What did you hear?” “We heard that you were a colonel in the Air Force” (very sarcastically). “Well, that’s right.” “We’re not going to take a course from a military man!”
Well, this is back in the days when ROTC was unpopular, when you were dictated by military draft on an effort to direct kids on formal respect at that time. And yet, I’m probably the least that way because I don’t like titles. People saluted my eagles [colonel insignia]. They didn’t salute me. I don’t like to hide behind any title; I can be called Fred. If I can’t get any respect without a title, then I don’t want it.
My wife cut an article out of the paper the other day, it was from Dear Abby or somebody was saying, “I don’t know how to deal with my professor; he seems so friendish, and I want to call him by his first name.” Dear Abby says, “That’s terrible, people should never permit that—professors should be considered—” And I thought that’s a crock (laughs). If you need a title to get respect (pause); people didn’t salute me, they saluted the colonel. All the braid on my hat and the colonel things, and that’s what they saluted when I walked in the room.
The only time military came in was my first class. I walked into it, and nobody called attention. I’m used to when I walk into a room, somebody calls attention, and everybody stands up. They listen to me, they don’t fall asleep, and I thought, Now there’s none of that. I have to be that exciting and that entertaining and that informative to make them listen. So, maybe that is what the challenge is. You would think I would have been more of an “iron butt.”
Johnson: Have you, over the years, gone back; I personally, just looking through history, really had a lot of changes of attitudes. Like your Vietnam War students [college students]. Usually, your college students are a little more vocal on current events such as Vietnam; now it’s SDI. Can you remember any particular events through your years that you have seen a lot of conflict on campus?
Fahringer: Not really, you know, college students, for the most part, really are interested in getting an education; the people who do most of this are a minority. Most of the kids who came here came with a purpose and their preference. Their preference could have been, I don’t want to get a job. It could have been even that simple. I don’t think that there are that many crusaders anymore, it’s just one percentage. Ten or twelve people at UT sat in the president’s office over the apartheid. Big headlines, so all of UT—it’s just a small percentage, and I think one of the troubles in a democracy is any minorities can get away with all sorts of stuff. They can get away with it, and it makes it sound like everybody does. I think, to get involved, that there are so many issues right now for a college student to think about that I don’t think they get involved as much. (Laughs)
This is a tough period, and there is a lot of stress, going to college. What are you going to do with your life when you’re getting out of there. I don’t really, I don’t see getting involved as much. (Laughs) There was a homosexual club on the base, I mean—you see, the military—right here on the campus, and I just mentioned, I said, “They’re having this authorized meeting,” [to his class]. Someone said, “If we go, do we get extra credit?” And I said, “Yeah, if you want extra credit in my class, I think it would be good for you to go and find out that these are people. They put their pants one leg at a time, and that there are women and their okay people. They’re very real adjusted; you just might find out that sexual preference is like religious preference, like just one of those things.” So, a whole bunch of my kids went, and they were amazed, listening there. They heard parents of people who are gay. So, I think there are some issues that they can be involved in, for they are here to get an education.
In fact, you want to (laughs) do something funny sometime, just ask a few questions in class like: “Who is the Vice President of the United States?” And the class doesn’t know. Half of them will not know who the Vice President is. If you go down deeper and ask them the Secretary of State, well, there is only 10% or 15% might give you the Secretary of State. If you ask about apartheid in Africa, they really don’t understand it. You can have a basic understanding of what is going on South Africa. They don’t understand about how the whites came in, built this country up, and what is going on. They don’t understand; I don’t think they want to. So, I’m not too sure that I have seen involvement. I think when they do get involved, I wish it were more intellectual than emotional. Most of the involvement is emotional; ROTC, the apartheid, seems to be quite emotional too.
Johnson: Have you received any outstanding awards such as in the Air Force, or when is your Nobel Peace Prize coming (Humorously).
Fahringer: Wouldn’t that be nice. You know, I was thinking the other day, I very seldom get any kind of an award. Except sort of indirectly. Let me tell you something that I think was a high award. This sounds stupid, okay.
There is a professor in sociology; his name is Dr. Clarence Schultz. I think he is probably one of the finest university professors that I have ever seen and heard. I mean, this guy is my idea of perfection, okay! I took a course from him because I wanted to experience this teacher, and I use many of his teaching techniques. (Pause) He asked me to nominate him for teacher of the year award for this university, which carries a financial award. That was the highest honor. I sat around for days thinking that man would ask me to recommend him. I sat down and wrote a letter, and he became teacher of the year. Harvey Ginsburg asked me to write a letter for him, and Harvey Ginsburg was selected. Now, that was an honor for me for those people to pick me to write a letter. My low level in this university, and two of the people who picked me, I wrote the letter of recommendation. They both got it [award], so that pleases me; that’s sort of an indirect award. I think that pleases me more than I f I had been given the award. Because in a way I was given two awards. I shared the book, and then I wrote the letter for them. The letter I wrote was with really a lot of feeling, but I never get anything else!
Johnson: I’m going to flip this over real quick [tape].
End Side 1, begin Side 2
Johnson: Okay, how do you get such nice-looking student assistants?
Fahringer: (Laughs) You know, it’s just as easy to marry a rich woman as it is to marry a poor women; it’s just that it’s easy to have somebody that’s nice to look at than it is somebody that’s not nice to look at. I like nice-looking women. I think that when I look at my students, I like attractive students. I don’t like guys wearing baseball caps in my class! Now, I don’t make them take them off. I tell them I don’t like it and don’t think it makes you look good. If you want to wear it, okay, just I hope you don’t need a favor from me. I will remember you because you wore your hat in my class.
I inherited my latest one [assistant]. She is a real good looker, and she is going to graduate school this year. 4.0 grade point average, too, so we’re not just talking about just plain beauty, we’re talking about brains too. I like to say she is a ten with a 4.0, you can’t beat it.
Johnson: I have learned a lot just sitting in your classes, listening to you, talking to you, attending over at your office (private practice). It seems like everything you say I pretty much take into my own repertoire of life. Is there anything that in particular that you really like—your philosophy on life or something?
Fahringer: Oh, Brad, I don’t know. (Pause) I mean you have to (sigh), it just depends on you. You have to like yourself, you have to feel good about yourself. I don’t mean overconfidence; I’m just talking about feeling worthwhile. Feeling good about yourself. You know, the golden rule says, “Treat other people as you treat yourself,” “Love they neighbor as thy self.” It is not love that is the problem word—it is hate. If you hate yourself, you can’t love other people. If you can’t forgive yourself, then you can’t forgive other people. It is important to feel good about yourself. And stress, today 90% of the people going to medical, doctors, are going for stress. People are dealing with stress, and they can’t really relate to other people.
They are frightened for other people to like them. When you do get hurt, tell them something like, “Hey, I care about you. Boy, you’re neat.” Now, they can hurt you, and so we’re frightened about being hurt. Never run scared! Stick your chin up and go for it! I can’t do that—and they run scared. I say, don’t ever get scared (pause), go for it. You’re not a loser. If I told you the number of battles I’ve lost, and I don’t consider myself a loser, I have lost a ton. I just don’t like people to run scared. I think, take life on and love it! Just don’t run scared, go out and go for it. You never know what you can do until you have tried. Don’t get this high expectation, get more realistic. It’s a great, big, neat world (emphasis), it really is. There is so much fun, and there is so much excitement, and so much to learn but you have to laugh—you can’t run scared. I guess that would be my philosophy—go for it!
Johnson: Well, Dr. Fahringer, thank you very much for your interview, and I’ll go ahead and turn these off now [recorders].
End of interview