by Joan Smith, Contributor to L. A. Haute Magazine
Although he hasn’t starred in a movie in more than a dozen years, Gerry Frey still has that rugged, All-American look of a handsome movie star, the charisma that draws you in when you speak to him. Frey has also made quite a few movies with his own film studio, Solus Media, which he sold this year for a hefty profit. Today Gerry is making a commercial – a PSA to be exact - advertising Orange Grove Senior Center in Pasadena, a facility that he and his wife used his own money to build. I sat down with Mare and Gerard Frey to talk about their passion project and the tragic events that unfolded here and how this will affect the future of Orange Grove Senior Center.
Gerry is dressed in a smart, tailored Tom Ford blue suit of Windsor Windowpane without a tie, his hair having gone salt and pepper grey since his days as a movie heartthrob. He sports a short, groomed beard but he is still all muscle. Mrs. Frey is wearing a beige linen pencil skirt, a white silk top and beige suede Jimmy Choos. She has straight, light brown hair with grey streaks, her hair falling past her shoulders and she has a curvy figure on a rather short frame - she's not a rail-thin model like Mr. Frey's first wife, actress Mia West. Mare smiles easily but she seems apprehensive to speak with me. However, Gerry Frey seems entirely comfortable with the process.
We are not standing in a movie lot but rather in Orange Grove Senior Center, a 1950s-era Spanish-style church remodeled into an activity center that Gerry and Mare Frey built to serve the senior citizens of Pasadena. This is also the site of a violent, deadly assault that nearly killed Mare Frey and a Pasadena police officer and took the life of their attacker, a man high on drugs.
JOAN SMITH: What qualifications do you have to take care of the elderly?
MARE LOCH FREY: I’m a daughter. Every son and daughter have not only the qualifications to take care of their parents but the responsibility. I'm also a Christian and as such, we are commanded to love our neighbors. As for professional qualifications, I’ve hired professionals to help me.
JOAN: Is this a nursing home and do we really need another one?
MARE: No, this is not a nursing home. This is an activity center, like many cities have. But we have involved church volunteers which local governments rarely do. We are more inclusive and diverse than government.
JOAN: How did this idea come about?
MARE: I’ve noticed in the last few years a trend toward ghosting parents. This is a travesty on our society, a travesty that has been instilled in a generation of children who think little of their parents and think a lot of themselves. Basically, it is selfishness and disrespect that has caused frightening loneliness in parents of adult children. Divorce plays a big part in it as well. We’ve taught kids that it’s okay to drop out of a family member’s life, to shun them. Because of the scourge of divorce, a great many seniors are single, and they must live on a single income. Additionally, many seniors do have adult children who want to care for their parents but are not available during the day because we now live in a two-income society.
JOAN: Why do you think daughters are more often their parents' caretakers instead of sons? Because of the residual idea of housewives?
MARE: I am pro housewife but that is a declining field. I don’t honestly know why that is since so many daughters have jobs in the workplace these days. But I’ve heard that generalization about daughters and know that was the case with my own parents.
GERRY FREY: I have to say in my family, my sister has been the primary caretaker of my dad and I have supported her in that role.
JOAN: What kind of support?
GERRY: Emotional and financial. I’ve supported her to the point that she doesn’t have to work outside the home and can stay with my dad.
JOAN: Tell me what kind of volunteers do you need, what is required of them?
MARE: We need people who can volunteer who only have a little time, may work odd hours or who can volunteer a lot. We also have paid positions for people who want to do it full time. My goal is to get everyone involved in the lives of seniors in whatever capacity they may have available to them because one day we are all going to be old. Most of all, we need people to take care of their parents. They owe it to them.
JOAN: Why seniors? Why not the homeless?
MARE: We don’t all have children, but we all have parents. My best advice for children is, whatever you do, don’t grow old alone. It’s frightening and dangerous. But mostly because this is my calling. And some seniors are homeless, and we may be expanding our feeding program soon to address more of the homelessness in our area. The very idea of someone being housed in a nursing home, sometimes kept against their will, doing nothing but waiting to die, breaks my heart and I almost can’t bear the thought of it. The world needs more love and Gerry and I discovered early on that we have the same mission; honor your father and mother. It’s not a suggestion, it’s a commandment.
JOAN: You know, not all parents are good parents.
MARE: Oh, I’m aware. But the commandment doesn’t give us a caveat for how much of a saint we should honor or how much sin it takes to justify treating them badly or ignoring them. God knew when he gave us parents that they would be sinners. And if someone’s parent hurt them, I’m so sorry about that and I can honestly say that I understand it on a personal level. My mother was a bi-polar mess. Growing up, 'bi-polar' was just another term for mean, in my childish mind. My mother was abusive and as an adult, I did ignore her at times, sometimes for months on end. But I came to realize that God requires me to forgive, or I will not be forgiven. It’s not easy.
JOAN: Let’s talk about the deadly incident that happened here. Can you tell me about it?
GERRY: I can speak to that, and I’ll let Mare add to it if she would like to. The son of one of our members was mentally unstable and a drug addict. He saw his father coming to our day center as some sort of interference, we’re really not clear on why he thought that. He had caused trouble before that day, so the police were aware of him. But he broke into the senior center very early one morning before opening when no one was here. One of our police officers was alerted, showed up and was ambushed, assaulted, and hit repeatedly in the head by the assailant and nearly killed.
None of that made any sense other than the man was high on drugs at the time. Mare came in early the same morning, found the officer and gave him CPR, alerting 911. She, too, was assaulted and hit in the head before Sr. Cpl. Porter shot and killed the assailant. They saved each other’s lives, and I can’t thank Pete Porter enough for that.
JOAN: Mare, you had a gun in your car. Can you address that?
MARE: No.
JOAN: Okay. Gerry, can you address that?
GERRY: Joan, I believe Mare’s answer was a complete sentence. But let me say that her licensed gun was in her car legally, untouched and found hours after the crime when a search was made during the investigation. The gun has been returned to her. End of story.
JOAN: Mare, there are people who say that as a gun owner, you should not be around our vulnerable seniors. What do you say?
MARE: Who are these people? I would ask them, are you taking care of your own parents? If so, you don’t need me. Taking care of people is its own reward, I don’t need to make critics happy because honestly, critics are rarely happy. It’s not hard to be critical but it is hard to get up and do something as there will always be objections from those who do nothing.
JOAN: What thought would you like to leave us with?
MARE: Start where you are. Google the closest nursing home, go there and just walk in the door. Talk to people, sit in the foyer, spend thirty minutes talking to someone who is lonely. Imagine yourself as lonely, in their place, in that place because more than likely you will be there one day. Above all, love your neighbor and that includes your parents. Love saves us all.
Copyright 2022 Mare Loch © All rights reserved. Excerpt from Orange Grove: The Reformation of a Midlife Wife by Mare Loch.
The characters and events portrayed on this website and all subsequent publications are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author. No part of this website may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.
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