My friend Jim Friedebach and I have been friends for over a half century! We think that we met over a bridge table in the college union at what was then Central Missouri State College. We knew people in common and somehow those bridge tables were great introduction spots. Jim is from Sedalia, Missouri, a small town thirty miles east of Warrensburg (where the college is located). His Father was a third generation railroad worker for Union Pacific and was tragically killed in an electrical accident when Jim was fifteen months old. He graduated from Sacred Heart High School in 1962 and enrolled in the University of Missouri.
Jim realized that college was an avenue he wanted to pursue and after one semester returned to Sedalia to work, raising money so that he could continue his education. He realized that goal and enrolled at Central Missouri State College and received a Bachelor of Science degree in Math and Chemistry. As the Viet Nam war was commencing and deferments were not an option for those enrolled in graduate school, Jim continued at CMSC getting further credits in Education and received his Missouri Teacher Certification. Deferments were available to teachers and Jim accepted a position with the Shawnee Missouri (Kansas) School district and taught eighth and ninth grade advanced Math.
Jim eventually was offered a position as a chemist with a company in Kansas City, Missouri but a close friend convinced him that he should pursue an advanced degree in Counseling. Jim enrolled at the University of Missouri – Kansas City and very quickly received his Master of Arts Degree in Counseling. A specialty clinic was opening back in his home town and Jim returned to Sedalia starting a private Psychology practice there. He says it was a life changing experience! His practice grew to include the Bureau of Maternal and Child Health clients and he was able to expand his services into other County Health clinics. There his expertise began to become more multidisciplinary and included working with disabled children.
As a result of the Statewide, multidisciplinary work, Jim along with a local pediatrician were able to receive a federal grant to provide multidisciplinary rural health care services in thirteen counties. As the original WESCENMO grant was winding down, Jim wrote a grant to provide Training and Technical Assistance to Head Start Grantees across the State of Missouri. The grant was responsible for training Head Start teachers how to manage disabled and severely disabled students. It was a three year project that concluded with the implementation of the successful training programs operational in Missouri.
As WESCENMO was coming to an end, Jim took a position with the Department of Education for the State of Missouri, State Schools for Severely Handicapped. The position included approving the eligibility of students for State services in the State Schools for the Severely Handicapped. The position entailed assisting local school districts with implementing appropriate diagnostic methods and development of IEP’s. His work proved to be the stepping stone to his next position.
So, mid-career, 1985, Jim became the first Director of Assessment for the State of Missouri in the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education. Along his path, Jim continued his education and became a licensed Psychologist and a licensed School Psychologist as well. Licensing was becoming the norm in the United States at that time and Jim was instrumental in working with other states to establish their licensing protocols. Other achievements during his tenure as Director of Assessment included developing the Basic Essential Skills Teat (BEST), the Missouri Mastery and Achievement Test (MMAT) and finally along with Missouri teachers and CTB McGraw Hill, the Missouri Assessment Project (MAP, master teachers were placed in Missouri Regional Universities to lead instructional efforts with local district teachers to assist them in using open-ended forms of assessment as part of their instructional techniques.
Jim retired. However, very quickly Jim joined the newly formed National Assessment of Educational Progress NEAP Coordinator effort organization, a federal program housed in Washington DC. He was a part of a very small group of people employed to work with NEAP State Coordinators on the analysis of NEAP state data. The organization placed one person in each State Department to assist with the interpretation of large scale data. Jim was the liaison between NAEP, the state Coordinators and the state Commissioners of Education as well Directors of Assessment in California, Florida, Kansas, Oregon, North Carolina, Arizona, Indiana and Arkansas. He trained the state coordinators to review relevant data and reports the findings. Jim knew that turning data into reliable information is the most important role of an assessment specialist. Jim retired after ten years with NAEP. For good this time!
Jim says that perhaps if he hadn’t been a psychologist (he still has his licenses) and followed the career path he chose, he likely would have been a chemist working in the drug development industry, though he says since he is not a solitary fellow that might not have worked out. More likely he would have become a University Professor. He would have told his seventeen year old self to not change a thing, just keep working. Confusion leads to learning and success; looking back on his journey and being where he found himself along the way, he says it’s hard to determine how it could have been any better!
He would like to meet Jesus Christ now and get some answers. He would want to meet Jesus now, knowing what we know now. He says that totalitarianism and religion has provided a tragic frailty in the world. “Believing” is an interesting concept.
And so Jim, thank you for being my friend, for sharing your life with me and making me so much smarter about things that I probably would not have had the opportunity to learn. Here’s to another half century! and……he likes martinis too!
