The Frizzell Legacy

My parents married quite young. There’s a reason, and there’s a story.

My father’s mother (my grandmother Barbara Frizzell Campbell) hung herself when my father was 12. She was, so near as I can know, a sensitive Scot from a family of proud, sensitive, literary, artistic Scots. John Henry Frizzell, her father, founded the Speech department at Penn State and was for many years the University chaplain as well. His “prayer of the day” is still featured in the local State College paper, the Centre Daily Times. Barbara, his daughter, would in all likelihood have been given ample chances at intervention in today’s world to deal with and treat the depression or otherwise undiagnosed mental disorder which caused her the internal strife that led to her fateful and tragic decision. Alas, this was the 1960s, and in America in that time the treatments available to such sufferers as her were in many ways in their infancy of heading in the right direction.

Barbara was a bit of Penn State royalty in a town that to this day has the university as its core, its spine, its blood, its heart, and its life. She married James Howard Campbell, not her social equal in State College by any measure, but a fellow Scots Irish American nonetheless, so the families called it a match. She bore him three children, Robert Burns, James Fraser and Marjorie. When she died Rob was 16, Jim was 12 and Margie was 7.

James Howard Campbell, my grandfather, served his country in the Navy. His wife’s death dealt him quite a blow. He turned to drink, remarried too soon, and watched his family dissolve as young Rob argued with his stepmother and then was kicked out of the house by her. Jim and Margie were quietly taken in by friends of the family, neighbors who wanted to help. They became foster kids. Their dad continued drinking.

Rob, Jim and Margie were all forced to grow up sooner than most. They all finished college, though, and today my dad and namesake uncle are retired career Penn Staters enjoying the fruits of a dependable state retirement system that is one reward for their years of service to the commonwealth’s largest educational entity.

Dad met Mom, Ellen Lynne Herman, while they washed dishes in the HUB (Hetzel Union Building) eatery kitchen. He hadn’t had a family of his own for nearly ten years, and his heart ached for it. They married when he was 21 and she 19. One month later, they were pregnant.