Frank Strother Ashburn, Jr. – 50th Reunion Essay

Frank Strother Ashburn, Jr.

5074 Sedgwick Street NW

Washington, DC 20016

fashburn@comcast.net

202-365-9366

Spouse(s): Susan Zimmerman Ashburn (1980)

Child(ren): Emma (1982) Stro (1982) Alison (1986) Clare (1988)

Grandchild(ren): Michah (2010) Zelma (2016) Amina (2017)

Education: Landon school ‘65, Yale ‘69 BA English, Georgetown ‘73 MD

Career: Internship Surgery Parkland Hospital, Dallas TX (‘74), Residency Ophthalmology Georgetown (‘78), Fellowship Glaucoma Barnes Hosiptal, St. Louis, MO (‘79), Ophthamologist, Washington, DC (‘79 – present)

Avocations: Food and Wine, Travel, Golf, Fly Fishing

College: Silliman

My Yale experience was a lot about developing self-knowledge. My conservative, Southern dad had told me that it was going to “take a long time to unlearn what [you] would learn up there.”

I had my roots in the south, with my dad from Texas, my mom from Mississippi. But Yale helped me understand how worlds far away could come together. My memorable example of this was the dinner at Master Clarke’s home in Silliman College. As an English major I was invited to a special dinner with three Southern authors, Robert Penn Warren, William Styron, and Willie Morris. I was seated next to Willie, who was the editor of Harpers and happened to be from Yazoo City, Mississippi, my Mom’s hometown. He had written North Towards Home a book about leaving the rednecks of the South for the civilization of the North. He had mentioned my grandfather’s drugstore as the redneck hangout of Yazoo. When he found out that I was the redneck’s grandson, now at Yale, he nearly fell out of his chair. His astonishment helped me understand who I was and clarified for me what my dad had meant about the different worlds that I connected.

Reminders of these contrasts and connections occur to me daily. I never could have guessed how my connections to Yale would evolve: that my first child, a daughter, would attend the college, play division 1 Ice hockey, and become a financial journalist in Shanghai, fluent in mandarin; that my son would look at Yale and turn away, saying “there is no one there like me, Dad”; and then to have the ”safe spaces” incidents at Silliman affect me in ways that made me think I was becoming my Father.

I still love to go back to the campus.