Virginia Fraire and Jacob Fraire

[00:00] VIRGINIA FRAIRE: Hello. I'm Virginia Friday. Today is January 14, 2023. And I'm here with my husband, Jacob Friday.

[00:10] JACOB FRAIRE: Hello. My name is Jacob Friday, and I'm here in El Paso, Texas, with my wife, Virginia, on January 14, 2023.

[00:23] VIRGINIA FRAIRE: So, my sweetheart, I want to spend some time talking a little bit about our arrival to this country. We both come from large mexican american families. Will you talk a little bit about your earliest memories as an immigrant in the United States?

[00:52] JACOB FRAIRE: Absolutely, Jacob So I think that if I can draw down the deepest parts of my memories, it was probably not long after we came to the US. I was maybe four and a half, maybe five years old, and having been the last of my siblings to be born in Mexico, I didn't yet have the experience of going to school, of going to a school. So when I came to the United States, into El Paso specifically, I remember distinctly my older brothers and sisters going to school, not only in the new country, not only in a new school, but it was like a new experience for them, and I was too young for that. And they told me that I was too young for that. And I remember struggling not just with the new community, but struggling with being at home and not being able to join my brothers and sisters in school in this great experience that they talked about when they came home. And that was kind of a sad experience, but I knew that something bright and exciting was here. I just couldn't participate in it in the first year of my. Of my coming as an immigrant.

[02:00] VIRGINIA FRAIRE: So it was a little bit like you felt a little disconnected even as you arrived and you made your transition here to this country.

[02:10] JACOB FRAIRE: Exactly. I think this is exactly a good description of what I felt. I mean, I certainly was connected with mom and dad and my brothers and sisters, but the schooling component, the experience of going to a new school, it just was deferred.

[02:24] VIRGINIA FRAIRE: Sure. So I know that you often talk about an interrupted education and your experience with the educational system in this country as an early childhood, in part because of your years as a migrant farm worker. Can you talk a little bit about that, share, paint a picture for me of that experience?

[03:02] JACOB FRAIRE: Absolutely. You know, it's really interesting. Life is full of many ironies, and one of the ironies in the. The experience that I had as a young child is that, as I said earlier, I came to the United States as a young immigrant not ready to enter school because of age. And the irony is that most of my childhood, I ended up going to multiple schools. So mom and dad, mom and dad, and the rest of the family and I migrated from beautiful El Paso, Texas to many destination points in the California over the course of about nine years of my childhood. So we literally moved from town to town, from labor camp to labor camp in search of migrant seasonal farm work. And that took me from school to school and school to school. And I like to joke with our children, as you know, I like to joke with them that I went to more elementary schools and I have fingers in my hands and toes in my feet. And so there's a little bit of irony in that. That experience that I had as a young child really taught me to understand and have deep empathy for people who haven't interrupted education.

[04:12] VIRGINIA FRAIRE: Yeah, I know that sometimes you've shared, and I'm not remembering the story completely, but there's a very prominent story that you often talk about to our children, that you have talked to about to our children. And it's that story where you started school and your parents were so focused on getting you registered, and they did. And before you knew it, it was time to pack up again. And so talk a little bit about that.

[04:46] JACOB FRAIRE: Thank you, sweetheart, for reminding me of that. You know, I tell that story to our children because I think it's a testament to the strong will of my parents. You know, it's difficult enough to put your children in a car or a van and travel a thousand miles or 1500 miles due west in search of a job. It's difficult enough to move them from town to town and from labor camp to labor camp. But then added to that, you have this complexity as a parent of making sure that your children do have an education. And so the story that I tell to my children, to our children, is really about a story about mom and dad's will. I remember going into this town in central California. We arrived, like on a Sunday. And so we arrived, got established, got settled in into the temporary housing. Dad went out to look for work. And then Monday came in. He took us to the school, took my brother and I to the school and got registered. And of course, this is pre Internet day, so they registered us. And that's all we did for Monday. And then on Tuesday, we went back and we got our health shots, our immunization shots, and that's all we can do on Tuesday. And then on Wednesday. This is now day three. I finally was able to get into the classroom. I finally was able to meet my new classmates and my teacher had a wonderful experience learning. And then on day four, it was time to move again. Dad took us out of this goal not because he wanted to, but because he had not secured a job in there for those three days. And so I tell that story not necessarily to reflect the interruption, but our parents determination to get us that education. But, my sweetheart, I know you had a similar experience. I mean, you were born in the US, but your parents struggled with this decision of moving, of emigrating away from Mexico. I'd love to hear about that.

[06:44] VIRGINIA FRAIRE: Yes. And I will share a little bit about my story. And before I do that, that story, for me, is profound in many ways, because I think that it is not dissimilar to the stories of many immigrants who decide to make the trek to the United States. Right. And today, in this, in 2023, as we continue to deal with the immigration crisis, the stories are real. And so I'm really. I'm touched, and I want to make sure that the story is not forgotten in our family and with. With our children. So thank you for sharing that. My story, in many ways, it's very similar to yours. You were the last to be born in Mexico, and I was the first to be born in the United States. At the time, we were still living in Juarez when my mother was pregnant from me, and my mother and dad immigrated from Chihuahua and Huascalientes, and they had a longstanding conversation, very passionate conversation, about moving to the United States. And my mother really struggled with it. And my father had always found work in the United States, and so he was really attracted to common to the United States, and believed that if we did that, that he could provide a better future for his family, even though this meant that he would have to leave his family and the life that he knew in Mexico. My mother was very reticent because she wasn't as open about leaving that life. At the end of the day, when it was time to give birth to me, my mother agreed that I would be born in El Paso, Texas, where we sit here today. And eventually we transitioned to El Paso. My mother and father already had a sibling, siblings living here. My mother and her sister married two brothers. And so my mother and my uncle were already living here in El Paso, and they welcomed us to their house and to a basement, a basement that was undeveloped, and that was how we began our life in the United States.

[09:46] JACOB FRAIRE: That's a beautiful story, sweetheart. I very much appreciate hearing it from you, because, you know, as I try to put myself in the shoes of your mom and your dad doing that decision, these are critical decisions that we make on behalf of our children, and I can only imagine how difficult it was for them. If you and I know, sit here with the right decision, for sure, and your parents made the right decision for you and your family, and I know that you had yet sort of another make decision that your mom specifically made years on after you lived here for many years. And I would love for our children to hear that story through your lens, through your voice, because after your father passed, your mother had to make another major decision that affected your entire family and the trajectory of where we are today.

[10:40] VIRGINIA FRAIRE: Absolutely. The decisions, as you've alluded, that we make on behalf of our children and that our parents made on behalf of our family and our siblings, they're consequential decisions. And I think we have a good story, but it's certainly not a story without tremendous sacrifice and trials and tribulations of finding a way to, to make it work. Soon after we lived, after we lived in the basement for a number of years, we found, my mother and father found housing at the Eisenhower public housing here in El Paso. And for us, that was a big opportunity. We were going to finally live in a home that had a yard. And it was a very big deal. And so for the first 15 years of my life, actually, about 13 years of my life, we lived in the Eisenhower public housing. And it was a beautiful life, a wonderful time. You don't know what you don't know. I knew that I had a home. I knew that I had an amazing family. Parents, mom and dad were profoundly in love with each other. That's what I remember. And I have seven siblings, so life was busy. And our life also centered around church and prayer meetings and going to church. And so it was a beautiful, beautiful time that I remember. I think the time that you're alluding to is that things really changed tremendously. When I was 15 years old, my father passed. And I mean, relatively speaking, those are formative years, right? You're only 15 years old. My mother had not worked in the United States. She still didn't speak English and didn't drive. And I was among the oldest in my family, left at home with my mother, with siblings who were younger than me.

[13:20] JACOB FRAIRE: Wow. Wow. You know, I wonder sometimes, thank you for that. I think I wonder sometimes as we became adults, you and I separately, as we became adults, whether, as we reflected on what we didn't know about the abject poverty in which we were living, you in public housing in East El Paso and me in labor camps all across California, I wondered to what extent, and I know in my case it did, it really affected the trajectory of what we decided to do for a living what we decided to do for our livelihood. Please.

[14:04] VIRGINIA FRAIRE: Yes. So when you said the word abject poverty, it brought a lot of memories to me. And I have two memories that I think are important to share about who I am and about why I became who I became. I believe, and I remember that I was, I mean, I helped my mother enroll in college. I helped my mother learn how to drive. I interpreted many things from my mother. I worked, I cleaned houses at the age of 13, 1415, 1617, even before my father had passed, my sister and I, the public housing that we lived in, if I can describe it, was surrounded, was a very large facility, and it's still there today, and it has been modernized. And I love to go back because it centers me about where I came from. But part of that complex is surrounded by this really tall wall. And at the age of 1315, things are bigger than they actually are. But behind that wall was a mobile home community where elderly people lived. And so as children, we were always curious about who lived behind that wall. And so we would climb the wall. We friended a lady who lived in one of those mobile homes that we could see each other from the wall. And so we started cleaning her house as children, in part because we needed money and in part because we felt like it was important to help.

[16:08] JACOB FRAIRE: Right?

[16:09] VIRGINIA FRAIRE: This was an older lady who did not have any family. So I think about that and I think about how those experiences really influenced who I am today.

[16:26] JACOB FRAIRE: You know, it's listening to your voice. I learned. So I fell in love with you because you're so passionate about what you do. And I fell in love with you because you love to help young people especially. But I did not know. I did not know until just this moment that you helped your own mother go to college and get her credential.

[16:51] VIRGINIA FRAIRE: Yes.

[16:52] JACOB FRAIRE: That's a beautiful story, my sweetheart.

[16:54] VIRGINIA FRAIRE: One of the stories that we have in our family is that for a while, we didn't have a vehicle after my father passed. And the old Betty, whose house we used to clean, donated her car to my mother. And that was our family car. But before we got that car, we had a moped, and that was our family's form of transportation. And I never drew, I never drove my mother on the moped. But my brother, who was one year older than, who's one year older than I am, he did, he would drive my mother on the moped to El Paso Community college to take classes.

[17:48] JACOB FRAIRE: That's beautiful. That's beautiful. I'm reflecting on what you're saying, it's so touching. My sweetheart, I've known you to be a passionate, passionate woman about college, about education, about your family, and I've loved that about you. It's why we married. And even though our coming together was by no means an easy task, I wonder, think about our children right now in this conversation, and to think about how they came together and how not sort of a difficult journey it must have been for them. So we're sort of the mexican american version or the Brady bunch, right? So I brought four children into the equation. You brought one beautiful child into the equation. And together we made a family of five, which is half the size of my sibling, by the way, but a family of five. And how difficult it must have been for them to come together. But how much we learned from our parents already has made impact on them. I can tell you my experience of watching our five children sort of literally come together and grow up together and learn from each other and learn to love each other and respect each other. It was a beautiful experience watching them as a parent. As a parent of five, I share with you here. My biggest fear is probably not. Probably not too dissimilar to perhaps what a parent of adopted children might feel like. You know, the fear that you would come to bring somebody into your life, new, additional, loving, and then build strong, loving relationship, and then the fear that they may. That they may go away, that the. That the relationship might end and the child that came with that relationship might end. And I don't know whether you and I have never talked about this. I don't know whether you ever shared that, shared that sentiment. But I tell you right now, it was tough for me. And, of course, now our children are adults and living well and loving towards each other. And we saw them this beautiful Christmas and got to see them interact and visit with each other. And that fear has somewhat subsided over the years, but I wanted to share that with you because it's important. It's part of our love. It's part of the love that we brought to them.

[20:20] VIRGINIA FRAIRE: Yes. So we are celebrating, actually, 15 years of marriage this year. Well, actually, it was December 15 when we celebrated 15 years of marriage. And you took me back to the very early years of our life together, of coming together. And as I reflect back, I feel like we've been very fortunate and incredibly blessed to look back on those 15 years. And clearly it was not a panacea coming together with five children. Blended families are of not easy to raise. And somehow we found a way to do it and to do it gracefully in the early years when it was difficult, I remember, one thing I remember very vividly is that Gabriela, who is, as you alluded, my, my biological daughter and who we often referred as a ringleader, she would try to try to get her way. And you and I would hold firm. We would hold firm on the parenting and the co parenting that we had committed to doing. And it took a lot of, it took a lot of grace and a lot of respect to allow one another to be part of the raising of these children, of our children. And that's not easy to do. I know that there are a lot of preconceived ideas and a lot of challenges that come with what I sometimes refer myself as a bonus mom. But I feel so lucky to have been part of raising all of our children. And today I look back and I am grateful that we continue to be a very close knit family because of the work, the hard work that we did together as a couple, raising these five beautiful children.

[23:09] JACOB FRAIRE: I feel very fortunate that our paths not just crossed, but that we came together. I'm reflecting on the fact that at some point in our lives, I was in the east coast, living in Washington, DC, and you were in the west coast living in San Diego, California. And how very real and very possible it could have been that we could have spent another 100 years living 3000 miles apart and never cross paths. And so how very grateful I am that we both decided unilaterally to move to Austin and meet in Austin and come together and bring our families together and continue to raise them in this wonderful way. Thank you for sharing that.

[23:57] VIRGINIA FRAIRE: Absolutely.

[24:00] JACOB FRAIRE: So I want to hear about your aspirations for the millions of individuals out in the world who could very well be our children, could very well be our nephews and nieces, who could very well be our grandchildren at some point in terms of their plight to a college education. As I said, this is why I fell in love with you. I think in the first conversation we had, you were quickly, deeply rooted into your passion about why we need to increase the number of people who not just go to college but get their degree. And to the day, you're dead set on that goal. Tell me about that. I would love to hear about that. More importantly, I would love for our children to hear about that.

[24:48] VIRGINIA FRAIRE: Yes. So much of what I've learned about the importance of education really comes from my upbringing. And I think as I reflect on my own background, my own background, and what you have shared about your desire to be connected as soon as you came to the United States to school, I reflect that that school and education has always been central to our lives and has been really the only path, as I see it, for me, to a better life in the United States, whether it was for me or for my mother. And so my early years of education are really influenced by seeing my mother attend college at the local community college and start from rock bottom, when you consider her background and the. The enormous responsibility that she had on her hands to get a career, to raise her children after my father passed. And so that is what continues to be the driver for the work that I do. I fundamentally understand that people live in very difficult circumstances, in abject poverty, as you referred to earlier. And for many of them, there will never be generational wealth. The only path to that is the hope that a college education would create a path to that generational wealth. And so when I started college, I actually wanted to. I studied an undergraduate, I earned an undergraduate and a graduate degree in social work because I felt like that was my mission, that that was my purpose, to help, to serve, to be good in the world. You and I often talk about the fact that we were 50 when we were ten, and I think this very much explains that sentiment. And so after I graduated from my master's degree in social work and I was working at a nonprofit, helping individuals who were being released from prison integrate. And through a lot of other experiences that I had beyond that first job, I constantly found myself helping people enroll in college, think about college, apply for college, apply for financial aid. I was always. I was always, for me, that was the way I could help people. And because at the end of the day, I really believe that an education is more than just a job. It provides purpose. It provides a way to contribute to society. It creates engaged people in the world, and it also provides a lot of hope.

[28:59] JACOB FRAIRE: It does. It truly does. So I love that about you. I love that about you. As you know, I am an eternal optimist. And sometimes we wake up in the morning and we see around us, and it's difficult to sustain a civil optimism, particularly because of the spaces that you and I hold where we see the data and we understand the consequences of what is taking place and what is not taking place. When you look at a simple data point that shows that in Texas, only about 23% of 8th graders will ever get any college education. And yet, the hope that you described just now is exactly the fuel that keeps us going. That keeps me going. And I love that about you. I can tell you. For me, I probably will stop working two, maybe three days before you put me 6ft under the ground just because there's so much more work to do.

[30:07] VIRGINIA FRAIRE: One of the things that I really love about you and that I find really inspiring is the optimism that you talk about and your aspirations through public policy, through changing systems and structures that have not served as well or served populations that have been historically underserved. I want you to share your story about your interest in public policy because your undergraduate education is in the sciences. You went out and pursued a computer science degree and you have a beautiful story about how you came to that major and then why you decided to pivot. Talk a little bit about that.

[31:16] JACOB FRAIRE: I'd be happy to, my sweetheart. So you said earlier in the conversation that sometimes as a young person, we don't know what we don't know. And there's so much truth to that. There is. As a young 18 year old who had literally, not figuratively, but literally, just left the agricultural fields and found myself on the college campus, an academic advisor asked me a very simple question. What do you want to study? He asked, and my response, and perhaps a little naive now that I think about it, was what makes the most money. And it wasn't that I was greedy, because I hope that you know that this is not a objective, it was just that I wanted to get out of the poverty. I wanted to get out of that cycle. And so when she and he said, well, computer science seems to be an emerging field, I said, sign me up. This is what I want to do because I wanted to get out of that so I can help my family, so I can help my parents, so I can contribute back to the, to the family income. But I really, I really appreciate you asking me to go down to why I chose public policy in 1985. There were only a handful of universities in this great country that provided service to children of migrant farm workers. And one of those universities, my alma mater, had a connection with a member of Congress from Michigan. And that member of Congress had one internship, one internship set aside for this university from Texas. And I was chosen not because of any kind of performance. I think it was just pure luck or the will of a greater being. But I was chosen and I went to Washington and I spent three wonderful, exciting months learning and understanding and really understanding the potential of that leverage, potential lever. We can spend a lifetime helping individual students and we should. One by 110 by ten, 100 by 100. Or you could spend a lifetime changing the systems in which our colleges navigate, in which our students navigate and helping those systems better serve our students. That's why I dedicated myself to public policy. I came back to that academic advisor right after the internship, and I said, I don't want to change my major. I just want to graduate soon, like, get me out of here so I can go back to DC. And the story that I tell our children is, you know, because I'm sure you've heard it, I tell my children is I think I graduated in July of 1987. And by August of 1987, I took a one way bus route from El Paso, Texas, to Washington, DC. It took me about two and a half days to get there, but I was in a hurry to get to that city because I wanted to do whatever I could do to change public policy. You know, I had not yet met or heard of the honorable John Lewis, but his words ring so true to me, so true to me. We have to be in the business of good trouble. And that drives me, and that drives me because I still have very distinct memories of the tens of children and the hundreds of children who I can see in those labor fields to the day. I see them. They're there. They're real. And most of them are going to continue to live in those fields and live in a life of poverty absent the opportunity that you and I strive to advance every day. So that. That's why I'm here, and that's why I love you. And that's why I love you. Because we have this sort of mutual purpose in our lives.

[35:30] VIRGINIA FRAIRE: We do. And that is a purpose of service to other, to others, to community, and a clear understanding that so much of what we have achieved is because of our parents, our family, and so many people along the way who open doors. And so I want to do that for others, for other Virginias and Jacobs in the world.

[36:02] JACOB FRAIRE: I agree. I agree, my sweetheart. And we will do this until we can't do it anymore.

[36:09] VIRGINIA FRAIRE: We will. Thank you. Thank you for this moment, for sharing, for reflecting, and for affirming for me why I love you so deeply, my darling.

[36:28] JACOB FRAIRE: Thank you for being in my life. Thank you for enriching our lives, and thank you for this beautiful conversation that I wish lasts forever.