Anna Daube Freund's Grand Slam - Baseball, Music & William Paterson Help Define a Life

-By Robert A. Manuel

It's May 30. A Decoration Day. As World War II seethes abroad, an army of civilians gathers around a truck in a vibrant Bronx neighborhood.

A strikingly glamorous young woman is lifted onto the vehicle. Once elevated, she dazzles a throng that occupies 10 square blocks on and around Cortlandt Avenue ­ past Yankee Stadium even ­ with a rousing, glorious rendition of "The Star-Spangled Banner."

Thanks to the movies, this particular mise en scène has a power over our collective psyche to jolt the memory and evoke a whole slew of similar images.We all have witnessed comparable scenes from scores of period films, or from old newsreel footage of fetching Hollywood starlets who, standing on elevated platforms amidst crowds, not only sold Victory bonds for the war effort but stole hearts in the bargain.

With one difference, however. This evocative vignette was real. The 20-something Juilliard graduate who sang the national anthem surrounded by hundreds is William Paterson's own Anna Daube Freund ­ alumna, professor emeritus, colleague, donor, volunteer and, for many, friend extraordinaire who, over the decades, has stolen a campus full of hearts.

Always elegantly attired, with steel-gray, upswept hair, Anna today imparts a stately, decorous, confident air ­ probably much like the self-assured chanteuse who sang to the New York crowd from the top of that flat-bed truck decades ago. Her comely, aristocratic features complement a warm, but not gushing, demeanor. She is not demure, an indication of the real truth about her special accomplishments. They have not come easily. Although Anna may possess a regal bearance, she is not an American Brahmin. Only through dedication, perseverance and hard work has her life taken its gratifying permutations: from a New York City steak house to a suburban New Jersey university campus, from Yankee Stadium and the Polo Grounds to Carnegie Hall. Not a charmed, but certainly a charming life.

Since 1960 Anna has maintained a steadfast presence at William Paterson University (listen hard and you can hear the school's amen corner vocally attest to its nearly four decades of great good luck). She first entered Paterson State Teachers College as a "nontraditional" sophomore. Through the school's subsequent appellative reincarnations ­ Paterson State College, then William Paterson College and, now, University ­ she and William Paterson have developed quite a symbiotic relationship.

Martin Krivin succinctly puts it this way: "Anna has done in the past, and I'm sure will do in the future, whatever needs to be done for William Paterson." He should know. As a long-time faculty colleague of hers, and as the former executive director of the Wayne Chamber Orchestra (WCO), he has been her cohort, especially since WCO's inception in 1986. For more than 10 years they have fought the same fights.

"She is an indomitable, irrepressible spirit," Krivin adds. "Anna, who currently serves as the chairperson of the orchestra's marketing and audience development committee, will on thoroughly rotten mornings slog through winter snow to attend meetings. That's an indication of her commitment and advocacy to the WCO... really, with whatever she's involved."

Anna wholeheartedly agrees. "I taught at William Paterson until they forced me to retire when I reached 71," she says. "Today, I teach at home, I work five days a week and I don't expect to quit any time soon. I can't retire; I have friends in their nineties who are my inspiration!" The 80-year-old speech pathologist and voice teacher continues to help a number of individuals who have speech disorders, and she teaches voice and singing to both professionals and amateurs as well. The piano in her Glen Rock, New Jersey, home is rarely still.

Although passionate about many things, music is her métier, one that imperceptibly has shaped her life. Indeed, being a speech therapist or a teacher were things that Anna Daube Freund admittedly didn't consider when she was growing up or when she worked as a singer and a musician in the 1940s and '50s. She acknowledges that the serendipitous quality of life has surprised her, leading her to many unexpected places.

Born in Manhattan on June 14, 1917, to German immigrants Paul Daube, a butcher, and Anna Pfeuffer Daube, a hausfrau, Anna was the eldest of three daughters. Soon after her birth the family moved to the Bronx where Mr. Daube predicted when his daughter was only 18 months old that she would be a singer. "My father encouraged me, prodded me on to sing although my mother was, at the time, dead set against it. She eventually came to fully support my singing career," Anna recalls fondly.

Over time, her father gave up the butcher business and opened several eateries in which he initially offered simple, light fare. He eventually found a site on Cortlandt Avenue in the Bronx where he sold beer and sandwiches for a quarter. Named "Paul Daube," the storefront soon added a beer garden in the back. Seven blocks east of Yankee Stadium, and only slightly farther from the Polo Grounds, the restaurant gradually became a watering hole for both the New York Yankees and the Giants. When the 1927 Yankee team members nicknamed Mr. Daube "the Dutchman," the proprietor soon adopted the moniker and officially added it to the restaurant's eponymous name. "Paul Daube The Dutchman, Famous for Steaks and Chops" rapidly grew to become a noted area landmark, known equally for its grill and its famous clientele.

As a child and teenager, Anna obviously had the chance to meet hundreds of baseball players, many whose names are now legendary, together with their families. The most famous? Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig were regulars at the steak house early on, Joe DiMaggio followed, and Mickey Mantle came in the early 1950s. The restaurant even became a mecca for sports writers and for out-of-town ball players when they came to compete against city teams.

In such an environment Anna could not help but become a baseball fan, a sport for which she developed a lifelong passion. Besides singing, she exercised her talented voice by rooting for the Yankees and Giants for many years. Anna and her family were offered daily passes and house seats from both teams early on; punishment for her and her sisters was not being allowed to attend a game. She came to know the game so well that former Yankee pitching coach Jim Turner once said that if ever there could be a woman manager, it would be Anna. To this day she is a popular guest lecturer on baseball history before community groups as well as at William Paterson.

Concerning this unique time in her life ­ and in baseball lore ­ when Paul Daube's restaurant was the foremost gathering place for those mythic boys of summer, Anna says, "It was the greatest education in my life, and I wouldn't exchange it for anything." When "Paul Daube," which opened in 1925, closed after 47 years upon her father's death in 1972, Anna remembers, "I was doubly crushed."

Decades before the restaurant's closing, however, Anna's singing career had already taken her to center stage. At the age of sixteen and a half, she attended the renowned Juilliard School of Music in New York City from which she earned a diploma in voice. After graduating in 1939, she performed as a soloist in numerous concerts, recitals, operas and oratorios. She made her recital debut in Steinway Hall, and appeared in New York Times Hall,Town Hall and Carnegie Hall.

A musical event soon after she and her family moved to Glen Rock propelled her life in a new direction ­ and straight towards William Paterson. In 1956 she was invited to sing in her children's grammar school. Upon concluding the concert of English, Italian, French, German and Spanish songs, which Anna had translated for her young audience, she greeted the students. The teachers (Nellie Hood in particular) were so taken with how she interacted with the children and their positive response to her, they advised Anna to become a teacher herself. Mrs. Hood's husband, Leon, who was then dean of admissions at Paterson State, greeted Anna at their first meeting by saying, "My wife said you would make a helluva teacher, and I believe her!"

"I gulped, and I just sat and listened to him," Anna explains. "So, in 1960, I entered as a sophomore after they agreed to accept my credits from Juilliard." She added that in her junior year she changed her major from elementary education and graduated with a bachelor's degree in speech correction in 1963.

An advisor of hers at the time was Anthony Maltese, who is recently retired from the University as former chair of the Department of Communication. Professor Maltese recalls that Anna "was a mature student and a delight to teach."

"After she graduated, we realized that we needed Anna's expertise," he continues. "As both a performer and a speech therapist, she could meet the needs of our students who were in training to perform on radio and TV. Her many talents dovetailed perfectly with our requirements. Anna started out as a student and ended as a peer valued by everyone. Not only did she take pride in herself, but she appreciated the accomplishments of her students. And, the students returned that affection."

By 1968, after receiving her master's in speech from Columbia University's Teachers College, she was back at William Paterson as Professor Maltese's colleague. Starting as an adjunct, Anna eventually became an assistant, then an associate professor in speech pathology and communication. It took a New Jersey statute that permits the forced retirement of faculty who reach age 70 to end her tenure from the University's Communication Department in 1988.

She left, but not quietly. Anna, together with more than a dozen other co-litigants, challenged the law but lost in 1992 when a federal court finally upheld it. Never embittered by the school's actions, she said she challenged the statute out of principle. "I regretted the forced retirement and believe such actions are a loss to colleges," Anna says adamantly. "If a person is capable and wants to stay, one shouldn't be forced out. I really loved teaching. What I miss most is my association with students, as well as colleagues. When you keep busy, your mind is active. I believe that is certainly what keeps me going."

And going. Don't offer her a rocking chair. Anna is not ready just yet. You see, she never really has retired. For 45 years, until last year, Anna sang as a church soloist. She has lived in the same house in the shady suburban comfort of Glen Rock for 44 years where she raised two children ­ a daughter, Anna Martin, who is an executive director in the office of the undersecretary at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C.; and a son, Paul, a William Paterson graduate with a degree in business administration who is in marketing/management ­ and, as a single parent, worked multiple jobs to put them through college.

In addition to her commitments to the Wayne Chamber Orchestra, Anna was, until recently, a member of the board of trustees of the Pro Arte Chorale in Paramus (its president from 1980 to 1986, the organization honored her with a testimonial in 1996), and served as president for organizations such as the New Jersey Speech-Language Association and the New Jersey Teachers of Singing.

She still teaches five days a week, lectures on "Old-Time Baseball" to classes and groups on- and off-campus, takes continuing education classes, has held most of the executive positions of the Zonta Club of Paterson Area (an international service association of executives in business and the professions dedicated to the status of women world-wide), participates in more than a dozen other professional organizations, and is involved with community groups like the Walter Engels Festival of Young Musicians in Ridgewood.

As a member of the Retired Professors Organization, she plays an active role at the University. In 1987 she chaired the Alumni Association's executive council for the Hobart Manor Restoration Committee that raised more than $150,000 in three years to refurbish to its former state of splendor the centerpiece of William Paterson's campus. Hobart Manor, a fine example of Victorian "castle" architecture, is a distinctive field-stone mansion that was the residence of the family of Garret A. Hobart, the U.S. vice president under William McKinley. In 1948, the house and a 250-acre core of the estate became the new site of Paterson State Teachers College.

Anna also was among a select group to be recognized at the first Decade of Distinction donor program and reception in June 1996. Established to honor those alumni and friends who have consistently supported William Paterson over a 10-year period, Anna was one of nine singled out for their outstanding long-term generosity and leadership.

Judy Linder, William Paterson's assistant director for special events who worked closely with Anna on the Hobart campaign, encapsulates how everyone on campus feels about Anna: "She is so dedicated, so caring and so loving a person, she touches intimately whomever she contacts. That's why Hobart Manor was such a complete success. Anna weaves herself throughout our community, supporting it and the staff totally. You can't help but support her back." And, support her she did. Judy initiated the process in which

Anna was presented with the 1997 Distinguished Alumni Award on October 19 during Homecoming weekend.

Anna Freund, for whom music has played such a central role, still performs occasionally (she gave a concert in April 1996 for the Alumni Association to benefit the University's Campaign for Communication). But, more important to her these days are the voice therapy and lessons ­ all leavened by large pinches of hope and inspiration ­ she offers students from her home. Anna is especially proud of one of them. She is a young singer who suffered from an invasive thyroid cancer, which left her with a paralyzed left vocal chord that prevented her from talking, never mind singing. Following her surgery, Anna first helped the woman speak again, and, subsequently, she has recovered enough to sing in public as well. "At a recent performance she gave," Anna said of her student, "there was not a dry eye in the house.

"I have so much to do yet, so many people to help," Anna confides matter-of-factly. "I expect to live to be 100." As evidenced by her life of diamond-hard determination, Anna Freund is well on her way to doing just that. WP