James R. Freeland - Life Story

Jim Freeland was born and grew up in Kansas City, Missouri.  He attended John J. Pershing elementary school and Southeast High School.  He credits his third grade teacher, Ms. Patch as a key educator in having him believe he could excel in school.  His parents, James L. and Ruby Freeland, believed that one key to a better life was education (his dad only got through the 8th grade before needing to work on the farm and his mom graduated from high school.  For this seventh birthday they gave him a complete set of Encylopaedia Britannica; probably a salesman had suggested it would give him an advantage.  From age 12 he held various jobs including TV Guide salesman, drugstore fountain clerk, and deliverer of the Kansas City morning and evening papers.  As his mom pointed out when he went away to Bradley University in Peoria, Illinois, he never returned to live at home. At Bradley his affiliation with Lambda Chi Alpha fraternity had positive and significant  effects on his life.  For the first time he had many brothers, could participate in many fraternity sports including football, basketball, track, volleyball, and softball, and was elected treasurer and then president of the Kappa Upsilon chapter of LCA.  At Bradley he met Janis Northdurft, the Dean of Admission's daughter and married her two days before they both graduated from Bradley. His interest in going to graduate school in industrial engineering was sidetracked by the Vietnam War and his low draft number.  While he applied for Navy Officer's Candidate School, he took a job in the manufacturing training program for RCA.  There he had assignments during the summer in Framinham, Massachusetts, Burlington, Massachusetts, and Indidanapolis, Indiana.  In August he learned he failed the army physical due to a temportary heart flutter he had while at Bradley.  His manager at RCA endorsed his request to leave RCA to accept a National Defense Education Act Fellowship that Georgia Tech had offered when he was thinking about going to graduate school.  This was a five year scholarship that paid tuition and a stipend to get a doctorate.