Ask Bronson Frick '95 about his job with Americans for Non-Smokers' Rights and he will tell you that poeple have to breathe regardless of their political affiliation.
"Our organization’s focus is really not on the smoker but on the non-smoker, and the idea that non-smokers shouldn’t have to die or get disease from other people’s smoke," Frick explains in a coffee shop not far from his Berkeley office. "So we are not an anti-smoking organization, we are an anti-secondhand-smoking organization. And we’re dedicated to helping protect the right of everyone to breathe clean air, especiallyin their place of work."
Frick grew up in a tiny town near Nashville in scenic Brown County, Indiana. But he traveled the world during his time at Wabash and before taking his current job in 2001. He saw violence in the old USSR and Bosnia when visiting Europe. He taught English in Indonesia for a while before earning a White House internship during the Clinton years, when Frick worked on then-First Lady Hillary Clinton’s staff. Then he became the key advance man for Commerce Secretary Norman Mineta.
He’s settled now into the quirky Berkeley scene as an activist helping small communities across the country write non-smoking ordinances. And throughout his education and career he has found an odd mix of Wabash and DePauw connections—from David Kendall ’66 to Vernon Jordan, DePauw ’57—to propel him to bigger and better things.
"Wabash really enabled me to take a different path—encouraged and supported me in taking a novel approach to the future," Frick says. "I’m grateful for the amazing network of alumni, which continues to astound me. Being elsewhere in the world and meeting someone who went to Wabash, it’s just as strong a connection now as it was the day I graduated."