Mr. Fred

Mr. Fred is the king of stories, of course, and he told and retold them until they were part of us.

There was the time he won his cruise’s Sexiest Legs contest as a 60-plus-year-old male, and the time he convinced me that he once dated Sofia Vergara. There was the time he chased a laptop thief onto South Road, and the time he chased his daughter’s boyfriend down the street. There were the times he was extremely protective of his home garden, and the times he was extremely protective of girls who worked at Campus Rec, promising bodily harm to any dumb college boys who treated them poorly.

There was the time he teared up when we said goodbye to him before graduating, and the time he let me dress up as him for Halloween.

“You can be my mini me, Robbie,” he told me as he proudly paraded me around Woollen and Fetzer.

There were tales of childhood athletic glory — basketball and football and baseball and running and shot put — and countless stories from his time in the Air Force, including how he met his wife, a beautiful Korean woman who worked in a flower shop that he and his friends passed every day on their morning walks.

“I’m gonna marry her one day,” he told his friends the first time he saw her, and he did. These days, Mrs. Fred rubs Mr. Fred’s feet and supplies Campus Rec’s end-of-semester parties with copious amounts of beef and rice.

Mr. Fred is romantic and old-school and funny and wise. “It’s difficult to soar with eagles when you walk on the ground with turkeys all day,” he likes to say. Or, during basketball rush hour at Woollen, “You guys are busier than two centipedes in a butt-kicking contest.”

“You’re smiling like you just got a $1,000 bill,” he’ll say if you’re smiling, and if you’re not he’ll tell you jokes until you are.

“Where are you from?” he’ll ask you if he hasn’t met you yet, and if you say Charlotte he’ll say, “I won’t hold that against you.”

“My goal was to make you all a little better, a little happier, a little smarter, or a little wiser. I hope I did that,” he commented on a Facebook picture — he is a king of Facebook — of last year’s seniors. “Thanks for all the praise you all laid upon me. I really didn’t do anything special. I will truly miss you guys.”

For one of my classes junior year, I was assigned a video project on a campus personality. My immediate reaction, of course, was to ask Mr. Fred to be my subject, and he happily agreed. Toward the end of our interview in his Fetzer lair, I asked him what he liked most about working for Campus Rec, and his answer will stick with me forever. “Making people’s days better,” he said.

Campus Rec without Mr. Fred, a security guard by title but so much more, is nearly unfathomable, but that’s how it’ll be this summer, when Mr. Fred retires after patrolling the halls of Fetzer and Woollen and the SRC for almost 20 years. He is, in the truest sense of the word, a legend, and I feel physical pain for all of the future workers who will never know what it’s like to spend an entire three-hour shift listening to his stories, or being showered with his tough love.

Mr. Fred is many things to many people. He is a strong voice when people most need one, and a quiet ear when they need that, too. He is a husband and a father. He is an artist (the wait list for one of his Ramses posters is longer than the waitlist to get into UNC) and a Korean soap opera connoisseur (one of the most enduring images of Mr. Fred is him holed up in his corner of the Fetzer lobby, watching one of the shows at full volume and eating something from Wendy’s, because Mrs. Fred won’t let him eat junk food at home). He was the inspiration for intramural team names (“Mr. Fred’s Army” and “The Fighting Mr. Freds”) and the most devoted fan of many intramural teams (he would come watch our games, and if we won he would celebrate with us, and if we lost he would tell us to keep our heads up because we’ll get ’em next time). He is an avid chewer of gum and eater of cookies, and one of the best horseshoes players in the Triangle.

But most important, Mr. Fred is a watchman, of the facilities, sure, but more so of the people who ran them. He cares deeply for everyone who works at Campus Rec, and he’ll remember small things that you told him years ago. He once gave $200 to two student-workers who were spring breaking in Las Vegas, and sometimes he’ll lock up the doors or turn off the lights at the end of the night so you don’t have to.

To many, he is family, a grandfather of sorts, and perhaps that was most clear when he visited our boss in the hospital years ago.

“Nobody can go in there but family,” the nurse told him as he tried to walk into the hospital room.

“I am family,” Mr. Fred told her, and walked in.

It wouldn’t be right to end this without a Mr. Fred story, so here goes: A few weeks ago I flew to Chapel Hill for the national championship, and I stopped by Woollen to see Mr. Fred, maybe for the last time. I walked down the steps and saw the typical scene: Mr. Fred leaning back in a chair, smiling and talking, as several students stood around him. I walked into the equipment room.

“Come here, son,” he said, and wrapped me in a hug. I will never forget that.