For many years, Norma had her feet firmly planted in both Pennsylvania and New Jersey. This Northeastern Quaker grew up in the coal mining area of Pennsylvania. She was born into a family from Lithuania and raised Catholic.

Norma went to Millersville Teachers College to become a teacher. She met Charles, also a teacher, a year after graduating and got married in 1963. Laughing, Norma said they had to get married. They wanted to travel together at a time when single teachers were not permitted to do that.

During the first 7 years of her marriage, Norma worked in teaching jobs in both New Jersey and Pennsylvania. “I kept the jobs I liked the most and were closest to where I lived.” She also completed a Masters degree in Special Education and became certified as an Educational Specialist. She worked for the rest of her career on a Child Study Team.

When her first child, Aaron was born 7 years into her marriage, Norma stopped working full time. Her second child, daughter Roslynn, arrived 3 years later. Norma did not resume full time work until both children were in college.  Norma continued to be active in her profession; she worked toward certification in counseling.

Although Norma became a Quaker while living in Pennsylvania, her doubts about Catholicism began much earlier. Her uncle married a woman who was a Baptist. According to the Catholic Church, her aunt could not go to heaven because she was not Catholic. Norma had trouble reconciling this with her observation that her aunt did not smoke, drink or curse – yet Norma had Catholic relatives who did all of the above and were bound for heaven.

When Norma spoke to the priest about her doubts, he recommended, “Just have faith”.

“They spoke to my condition”, Norma said when she discovered Solebury, Pennsylvania Monthly Meeting. She found Quakerism made sense to her and became active in the life of the meeting. She was a First Day School teacher and involved with the Peace and Social Concerns Committee and a local Quaker children’s camp. She embraces the concept that all men and women are equal in the eyes of God and is comfortable and happy being a Quaker.

Charles and Norma just sold their Pennsylvania home. They also own a place in Maine where they spend part of the summer. They live in Pine Island Cove, a senior citizen community on a canal. Norma laughs as she says she is a member of the Matlacha Hookers, a group that raises money for people in need. Both of their children are married and living in the Northeast.

Norma and Charles are the proud owners of Chloe, a miniature schnauzer who comes to meeting for worship. Their Quaker perspective has rubbed off on Chloe. He knows how to meditate.

From Detroit to the desert, from Princeton to Toronto, Nancy has gone through many changes in her life. Nancy grew up in Detroit, the child of parents who had modest upbringings. Since both her parents were exposed to “hell fire damnation” churches, they make a deliberate choice to let their children choose their own religions. Nancy’s neighbor introduced her to the Lutheran church, where Nancy went through a confirmation before drifting away as a teenager.

Nancy went to Brandeis University and then Harvard, and ultimately earned a PhD. She is a sociologist who married an anthropologist who had worked with Bushmen in the Kalahari Desert in South Africa. Nancy went to Africa where she took the reproductive histories of the Bushwomen during a two year stay. Her career evolved from this experience to one that was on the edge between anthropology and sociology.

Return to the United States

Upon her return to the United States, Nancy found the environment to be dirty, noisy and polluted. She accepted a job teaching at Princeton University. This occurred during the height of the protest era, in 1969 when students were daily protesting the Vietnam War. The protests created such a disruptive environment that Nancy and her husband Richard decided to move to Toronto. She delivered twin boys who received care in a day care located within a Quaker Meetinghouse near the University of Toronto, Nancy’s first sustained exposure to the values of a Quaker community.

Nancy and Richard divorced when the twins were a year and a half old. Nancy continued to teach at the University of Toronto. When her twins were 14-years-old, they went on a trip to Africa with their father. Richard was at the wheel in an overloaded truck when he lost control and the truck flipped over. One of Nancy’s sons, Alex Lee, and a graduate student, Melissa Knauer, who were riding on the roof of the truck, were killed. Her surviving son, David Lee, was injured and devastated by the loss of his brother. This tragic loss infuriated Nancy and led her to question a lot of aspects of life. She asked the University of Toronto for a leave of absence, and took her son David to Palo Alto where he enrolled in high school and Nancy went to the Center for Advanced Studies at Stanford. She stayed in California for 3 years before returning to Toronto.

David moved to New York after high school, where he worked as a musician, explored the city and ten years later decided to “join the family business” – to become a professor. Recently he has completed his PhD and is now teaching at the City University of New York.

Deepening Connection to Quakers

Nancy remarried at the age of 55 to a man she knew before she married her first husband, Andre Gunder Frank.   Their marriage lasted 4 years. Her second husband was instrumental in connecting Nancy with Quakers. He had gone to Swarthmore College (a Quaker based college in the outskirts of Philadelphia) and knew about Quakers. They began attending meetings for worship. Although her husband attended meetings for only a year, Nancy continued to participate after he stopped, feeling she had found her spiritual home.

The University of Toronto required its professors to stop working at the age of 65. When Nancy retired in 2004, she moved to Florida to be near her father, who was 93-years-old. He lived to be almost 100; Nancy got hooked on life in Florida. She put down roots in the Fort Myers Monthly Meeting. In comparison to the large Quaker community in Toronto, she recognized that the much smaller Fort Myers Monthly Meeting needed active participation from everyone.

From 2005 to 2009 she was active in counter-recruiting in the Lee County high schools, and from 2011-2014 she served as clerk of the meeting.

Quaker Values

The love of nature, simplicity and peace – these are the Quaker values that most resonate with Nancy. She expresses her simplicity values by not spending what she does not have and not getting caught up in consumerism. She is careful with her money and derives no pleasure from spending it.  She expressed the Peace Testimony even before she became a Quaker:  Nancy worked full-time in the Boston chapter of the SANE Nuclear Policy Committee at age 20, a group dedicated to eliminating nuclear weapons.

The sense of community is the most satisfying aspect for Nancy of being part of the Fort Myers Monthly Meeting. She enjoys living in a development with other members of the meeting (the Fennells and the Frechettes) and the sense of caring that exists within the meeting. Nancy would love to see the meeting eventually purchase a building to use as its own home, with expanded space for activities and first day school. She believes it would strengthen the community, attract younger members with families, and create a stronger future for the Meeting.

Instead of being known as Friend Richard, Richard might have been called Father Richard. After growing up in a Catholic family and going to a Catholic school, Richard enrolled in a Catholic seminary to become a priest. Partway through his seminary training, he become disenchanted with the separation between clergy and the laity and withdrew from the seminary. He then went to college.

Silk screening romance
While enrolled at University of Rhode Island, Richard met Suzanne at a summer job sweatshop. They toiled on the fourth floor of a non-air conditioned old building squeezing dye through a mesh onto sweaters and shells.  The work experience was terrible, but it resulted in a lifelong relationship.

Working years
Richard graduated from college with a degree in sociology and a minor in community organization. His first job after graduation involved working for the Urban League in Rhode Island, focusing on housing issues. He also gained experience in planning programs by working for the United Way and then entered the state government in a financial role assisting with the state budget. This was a stepping stone for a job as Chief Financial Officer for the Department of Corrections.

Richard’s role in Corrections for 20 years put him at the policy table and gave him an opportunity to emphasize the importance of nonviolence training for correction officers and to focus on the impact of violence within the prison community.  Outside of his job, he volunteered to work within the realm of victim/offender, a form of restorative justice. The program addressed the human dimensions of the harm created by the offender and got the victim and offender together for a facilitated discussion aimed at insight, remorse and forgiveness. Richard also spoke to faith communities throughout RI about the role they could play in a restorative form of justice.

As Richard’s familiarity with the Department of Corrections grew, he recognized the critical importance of what happens when the inmate is released back to the community. He realized that three factors are critical for a successful reintegration process: a job, housing and positive connections. He spent the last 2.5 years of his working life dedicated to establishing reintegration councils statewide, pulling together the police, probation, social service agencies and faith communities.

Family life
Suzanne and Richard have two children: a daughter who lives in Seattle and teaches eight grade math in an alternative school, and a son who is a journalist at a Massachusetts newspaper and lives in Rhode Island.

When the couple are not in Fort Myers, they live in a 480 square foot Rhode Island cottage that originally was part of a tent village on a farm a walk away from the beach. This seasonal cottage is on leased land, and has a definite season. The water and mail are shut off on Columbus Day and everyone scatters until the following May. The Frechettes spend much of their time outside during the 5 months a year they are there. The Frechettes have family in Rhode Island. In addition to their son, Richard’s parents are in Rhode Island.

Discovery of Quakerism
“Isn’t that a nice historic building” the couple thought when they passed the Smithfield Monthly Meeting, 5 miles from their house. One day they discovered cars in front of the meeting on a First Day and realized it was more than a historic building. When Richard first started attending the Quaker meeting, he realized he was always a Quaker. His beliefs fell into place as he recognized that the Meeting had what he was searching for. He could not articulate what he needed until he became immersed in the Quaker community. Within 3 months, he applied for membership.

Fort Myers
In 2009, Richard and Suzanne made plans to visit friends in the Big Pine community in Fort Myers. Although they planned to arrive on a First Day, they came a day early and decided to check out the Fort Myers Monthly Meeting on First Day. A group of Friends gathered for lunch afterwards, and spend a few hours talking. Richard and Suzanne realized they could be very comfortable within the Fort Myers Monthly Meeting community. When they discovered their friends wanted to sell their space in Big Pine, Richard and Suzanne leapt at the chance to buy it and within days, completed a closing on the property.

Quaker values
Richard is drawn to several of the Quaker values: the universalist sense of God within, the ability to connect to God without an intermediary, and the sense of community. He realized he was first a member of a Quaker community, and then he could declare he was a Quaker.