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After graduation from high school, I attended Hope College where I majored in sociology and minored in psychology and art. While at Hope I participated in the college's first venture into international education, the Hope College Vienna Summer School Program, a life changing experience (more on that later).
After my junior year, I married Arthur Ahrens, a Naval Academy graduate, returning to complete my senior year at Hope. I joined Art at Keesler Air Force Base in Biloxi, MS, where he was in training as a radar specialist. Our time spent there was brief, as we were assigned to Gettysburg AFB in SD a Dew Line station. While there, I served as a swimming instructor, a member of the officer’s wives club, and volunteer at the local hospital. Service in the wives club provided some interesting experiences as Air Force generals would visit the area for the superior pheasant hunting. Needless to say, as a fledgling officer's wife, I learned how to prepare roast pheasant.
In late 1960, Art was transferred to the Otis AF SAC Base and assigned to the Texas Towers, radar stations in the ocean and was there
during the Cuban missile crisis. While on tour in the ocean, I served as president of the wives club (I took great pride in beating out a colonel's wife for the position - what a coup!). I really enjoyed the Cape Cod scene.
Our move to Ent AFB in Colorado Springs provided me with a host of interesting opportunities. I was hired as the first CHAP (Children Have A Potential) social worker for the armed forces. While there, I originated and ran an art fair emphasizing art work by special needs children and contributions by nationally-known artists. This included gifts from cartoonists Charles Schultz and Milton Caniff which were auctioned off to benefit the program. While there I was notified that I had been selected and appeared in the 1967 edition of Outstanding Young Women in America in recognition of outstanding ability, accomplishments, and service to community, country, and profession. Just before leaving Colorado Springs, I had applied, was accepted, and was provided with a full-time stipend from the University of Illinois to pursue a M.Sc. in Therapeutic Recreation and spent a little over a year on the Champaign, IL, campus. Upon returning to AK, I was
offered a job at the AK Native Medical Center where I worked as an occupational and recreational therapist.
While there, I was approached by The Kennedy Foundation to serve as state director to spearhead plans for the first Special Olympics Program for the State of Alaska. I contacted the Greater Anchorage School District to partner with this all-Alaska community effort in providing this opportunity for special needs school-aged children. This effort continues to this day.
In 1971, Art was assigned to the Fort Lee Army Post near Petersburg, VA, as an Air Force liaison. I immersed myself in a host of professional and community activities. As a result of a lifetime of community, professional, and military dependent contributions, I was selected as the Military Wife of the Year for the Eastern Seaboard in both 1973 and 1974. Two years later Art and I parted.
Over the preceding nearly 20 years, I sought out opportunities where I could contribute to the community while at the same time benefiting from the experience. These included taking courses at a wide variety of colleges and universities and taking part and observing cultural differences in the localities in which I lived.
In 1976, I moved to California where I met and eventually married Colonel Chuck Frederick, a Marine fighter pilot. Chuck was stationed at the El Toro Marine Corp Base. He had served three tours in Viet Nam and was being transferred to a years duty in Japan, leaving my Samoyed (Tara) and I alone to move into a home in nearby Mission Viejo. When he returned, he was transferred to Camp Pendleton and we moved to
Carlsbad. He retired in 1984 and started a new job the very next day. I was working at the Carlsbad City Library in the Childrens Department where I was responsible for obtaining speakers, arts and crafts programs, story telling and puppet shows.
My boss had suggested that we hold a Carlsbad Loves Kids Day in a downtown park and he placed me in charge of everything. It was a huge success and very well received by the community.
In 1986, my husband and I received a call from his mother in Topeka, KS, asking us to take care of my father-in-law. We quit our jobs, put our household goods in storage, and traveled to Topeka. Two years later, after my father-in-law’s death, both my husband and his mom were diagnosed with colon cancer. That began a long and arduous walk in my life as I was caring for two dying loved ones.
In the spring of 1990, I told them that that I wanted to go back home to California and they agreed. So, we all moved into a temporary home in Carlsbad, my husband in one room, and the mother-in-law in the other. I don't know how I did it, but for the Grace of God. The care-giving was so intense, that I dropped out of everything I searched for the good in my life. But, frankly, for a period of years, I had been so consumed with care-giving, that I literally did not know what was going on in the world.
They both died within months of each other in early 1993. And, a few months later, I received a call from my mother's doctor with news that she had suffered a heart attack, and would I come out to New Jersey to be with her. I spent the next few months there, and eventually, my mother moved close to my sister in Tucson, AZ. The following year, I bought a condo overlooking the ocean in Carlsbad and began a new life.
In 1998, my friends and neighbors urged me to attend my 40th Hope College Reunion. Sitting at the table with me was a fellow named Ev Nienhouse whom I had met during the aforementioned Vienna Summer School Program 42 years before. We enjoyed catching up on our
respective lives and discovered that we had much in common including the fact that Ev had lost his wife to cancer.
A reunion romance developed and, a year and a half later, on October 16, 1999, we were married in Rancho Santa Fe, California. Now, here is a real interesting piece of information: my deceased husband had participated in the nuclear bomb testing in Nevada in 1955, and here I was marrying Ev, the recipient of a nuclear, Plutonium 238, powered heart pacer that his provided him with the gift of life for 33 plus years without ever needing servicing. What a remarkable juxtaposition of harnessing the atom for both destructive and peaceful purposes. I should add that recently, Ev had the thrill of addressing a group of scientists at the Los Alamos National Laboratory who were instrumental in developing the technology in using thermonuclear radiation to provide electricity to power the device.
My marriage to Ev has resulted in dividing our time between my Carlsbad condo and his property in rural Ellsworth, Michigan. After retirement from teaching organic chemistry and forensic science techniques at Ferris State University in Michigan, Ev moved to
Northwestern Michigan where we spend our summers in a 112 year old renovated farmhouse and 40 acre property complete with creek, two ponds, and nearly a mile of paths. We enjoy the fruits of the season as the area is one fruit farm and orchard after another.
Our life in Carlsbad is a mix of community and church volunteerism and travel. Five years ago I walked into the local YMCA's director's office and was immediately placed on the Board while Ev began providing enrichment lectures. I am also a deacon in our church where I co-chair the Military Outreach Ministry, mainly to Camp Pendleton Marine families.
As I prepare for my first reunion in 55 years at IHS, I look forward with great anticipat ion to attending the October event and reestablishing those treasured friendships of the past.
