By the WOTS Team
This is a special section dedicated to all the FREDS in our world. Our writers chose someone who possesses the characteristics of a FRED — fearless, resilient, empathetic, and dynamic — and wrote about how this person affected their lives. Who is a FRED in your life?
I Was Raised by a FRED
By Jodi Peterson-Stigers
My dad, Charles Bernard Margolin, was fearless, resilient, empathetic, and so very dynamic. His life was not easy. He came from humble beginnings and faced significant challenges, including a severe stutter that made communication difficult. Yet his ambition and his drive to do good were fierce. He worked tirelessly to overcome obstacles and to create a beautiful life for our family and for our community.
My dad ran a business with one guiding principle: take care of your employees, and the customers will feel the difference. He believed that when staff felt valued and appreciated, their work became a gift to others. His leadership went beyond the workplace. He became a respected voice in the business world, standing fearlessly on stages and sharing his knowledge, even as his stutter sometimes followed him into the spotlight.
Together with my mother, he helped build a senior center for our Jewish community in California. It became a place for elders to reconnect, celebrate their culture, and share their stories of survival during the Holocaust. My dad knew the names of every server at his favorite restaurants and kept a drawer full of birthday and thank-you cards ready to send to friends and colleagues. He made a practice of celebrating people. Through his example, he taught me how to see others, how to care for them, and how to believe in myself. He gave me wings by believing in me so completely.
I always knew he was a powerful force for good, but I did not understand the full measure of his bravery until my mother passed away. In her absence, my dad suffered a psychotic break. Only then did I begin to understand what he had been overcoming his entire life. He had lived with severe mental illness, something we, as his children, never knew. My mother fought fiercely to protect him from the stigma of those times, shielding us and others from his struggle.
It was only after her passing that we learned the truth. He had battled this debilitating disease all along, but with my mother’s unwavering love and care he managed to find ways back to stability. When his illness became too overwhelming, my mother would take him to the hospital where he would stay for a time to receive treatment. We grew up thinking he was away on business, never knowing that he was quietly fighting for his health and his balance.
He was funny, dynamic, caring, and deeply good. He also fought demons in silence, with my mother always at his side. After she was gone, he lost the will to continue that fight, and in 2014 we lost him too.
My father was a FRED in every sense of the word. Fearless in his ambition. Resilient in the face of obstacles. Empathetic in how he saw and cared for others. Dynamic in the way he lived and gave. His life, with all its triumphs and struggles, continues to be my greatest teacher.
Grandparents
By Chris Alvarez
I had both sets of grandparents growing up, and I was really lucky. They were fearless, resilient, empathetic, and dynamic.
My mom’s dad was in the First Cavalry Army in WW2 in the Pacific and fought hand-to-hand. My dad’s dad did the same in the Navy in the same war. My mom’s mom was a housewife who never had a driver’s license, and my nana (dad’s mom) was also a housewife in the very traditional sense, keeping a tight house.
Both grandmas and grandpas were the same in those regards. All fearless people who physically fought for our freedom and their families, synonymously fighting non-physical wars in the socioeconomic battles on the home front of the United States, which seems to never end because of greed among us.
Resilience was apparent in all of their lives, starting from my mom’s parents being from Mexico, having to endure systemic racism at the time, and still being able to succeed despite having to fight this uphill battle. Meanwhile, my dad’s parents were experiencing the socioeconomic turnstile of blue-collar work in return for a hopefully satisfying existence.
They were all empathetic people, taking in family strays off the street and giving them a good life. For example, certain cousins who were having a hard time. They loved everyone, and everyone loved all of my grandparents.
Dynamically, I believe that all of this encompasses that definition due to the fact that they were able to achieve a high level of conscious life amidst all of the turmoil and love that life has to offer. I love them all and I miss them every single day more than words can express. I can only hope that I will be wherever they are when my body turns back into dust.
A Ray of Hope
By Molly Balison
I’ve never met anyone like Rayleah Valles. When I think of her, the words fearless, resilient, empathic and dynamic, naturally come to mind.
At just eight years old, she fearlessly fought stage 3 melanoma. She always held onto hope that she was going to survive. She recounted to me that she saw Jesus standing at the foot of her hospital bed. He reached out to her and told her she was going to be okay. Those words carried her through six invasive surgeries and daily chemotherapy for two years, until Rayleah saw victory over illness.
To this day, she faces trials with the same assurance she isn’t alone. This hope has made her one of the most resilient people I know. Not only for beating cancer, but also for enduring other health issues and setbacks that have tried to knock her down. She wanted to travel the world to share her faith so she raised the funds and did so in three different countries, including Italy where she and I got to share messages of hope on the oldest college campus in Europe.
Even in her pain, she finds a way to care for others, radiating empathy. When she was 11 years old, she dreamed up a foundation to raise awareness for skin cancer and prevention. She organized a 5k run where she raised $3,000 for the Michael Hoefflin Foundation for Children’s Cancer, then raised more than $9,000 for the Children’s Cancer Research Fund in honor of her friend Christopher who passed from cancer.
I will never forget the time we spent beneath a willow tree along the Greenbelt reading out Bibles and pouring out our hearts to each other. It was as if her empathy wrapped around me like a warm hug. She genuinely listens and reflects that makes people feel seen and heard. Now, we always think of each other when we see a willow tree.
Recently, she had another surgery after suffering chronic pain that interrupted her college education, work and enjoyment of the activities she loves. Four days into her recovery, she told me how she was dreaming about her next steps in life. Her dynamic nature seeks challenges and opportunities to grow. She doesn’t allow fear or setbacks to stunt her aspirations for life and looks heavenward as she takes each step.
The girl I met five years ago is not the same girl she is today. We became roommates in college and I watched her leave her old lifestyle behind to follow Jesus wholeheartedly with a fervor that encouraged me to hold fast to my own faith. Her name is a symbol of all she has been through. At birth, she was named Leah, but she added Ray to her first name three years ago to reflect who she had become and I couldn’t be more proud of her. She is truly a Ray of hope and fearless, resilient, empathic and dynamic in every way.
Empathic Fred
By Angelika Hungerford
There was a time in my life when I was challenged and needed help with the emotional pain of being pregnant and single.
The wonderful part of this timing is that an opportunity was provided as I received a position to assist a lovely lady, Laverne Tinsley, who became not only my boss, but also a friend and mentor. Throughout the years, she and I became very close both professionally and personally. She encouraged me to understand that not only was education important, the side of building relationships with others was vital. She was the Assistant Vice President of the Customer Service Department for orphaned policy holders.
This also reflects empathy to those who have the perception that they may have been forgotten. Allowing the growth of the department, even if it was small, gave the completion to a larger picture.
Later on the consolidation of four companies happened and I was chosen to take the task of communicating to the employees that would be let go. This weighed heavily on my mind. However, it was also a way of displacing the emotion and action of empathy.
As the future came to pass, Luverne and I kept in touch and later in life, she died of cancer. Thus she was no longer in pain and I also knew that this friendship remained.
The writer of empathy is that it leads to a pathway of meeting others who also provide service and care, no matter what their title or status.