Freida Loyce Carson. Encourager, friend, educator, colleague, a great and inspiring mentor!
Editor’s Note: Freida’s memorial service will be Thursday, January 20, 2002, at 1:00 pm central time, and a Committal Service will be held graveside on January 31 in Herne, Texas, where Freida will be laid to rest alongside her mother and father.
Please leave a short comment below. NSH will share your thoughts with Pastor McGuire to incorporate them into her memorial service.
I began my career in Histotechnology in the fall, 1972 in a small college histology laboratory. I wanted to learn and understand more about Histology as it was referred to at that time. Histotechnology was a new word to me but seemed very interesting. I explored further training and came across the School of Histotechnology at the University of Tennessee Medical Units in Memphis, TN.
I applied, was accepted, and began my formal training in January 1976. My professor was Gerre Wells, Supervisor of City of Memphis Hospital Histopathology Laboratory and Education Coordinator of the Histotechnology Program at the University of Tennessee. Gerre wanted her students to learn Histotechnology and to meet and interact with particular people in Histotechnology, one of whom was Dr. Freida Carson. I was happy to meet these colleagues of Gerre’s. I was impressed with Dr. Carson, the Director of the Histopathology Laboratory at Baylor University Medical Center in Dallas, TX. I learned that Dr. Carson had one of the first ten (10) Histologic Technician Schools in the United States to receive approval from the Board of Schools of Medical Education of the Medical Association, marking the beginning of national approval for Schools of Histologic Technique.
My instructor Gerre Wells wanted us to join the American Society for Medical Technology (ASMT) as HT students. NSH was just in its infancy, and ASMT had a discipline called the Scientific Assembly that had a section referred to as the Histology Section. Dr. Carson was a member of ASMT and served as the Chair of the ASMT Histology Section of the Scientific Assembly. In 1980 she was awarded the Texas Women’s University Distinguished Alumnae Award in Denton, TX….” for her devotion to enhancing the quality of medicine through the training of technologists and to perfecting the science of Histology.” Dr. Mary Evelyn Blagg Huey, Texas Women’s University President, said, “Dr. Carson’s role as the only woman histologist and one of the only histologists in the US holding the Doctor of Philosophy degree bears evidence of her pioneering instincts.” As a young student, Gerre Wells and Dr. Carson inspired me to learn as much as possible about this profession. Later, Gerre told me that Dr. Carson wanted technicians to “get involved in the profession.”
I attended one of Dr. Carson’s lectures at one of Gerre Wells’ Continuing Education Seminars, and already I wanted to learn more from her. In 1983 I received a brochure about an upcoming staining seminar presented by Dr. Carson at the ASCP CAMA (Commission on Associated Members Activities) Regional Program. I was already a member of the ASCP Associated Members Section. The seminar was Color Me Right: A Seminar in Staining, November 19, 1983, at the ASCP Education Center in Chicago. The registration letter further stated that “we hope this workshop will be an informative and interesting experience.” When I talked with Dr. Carson at the seminar, she told me to call her “Freida.” This was my beginning to see that she was a humble person.
As time progressed, I remembered Gerre told me earlier how Freida wanted techs to get involved, so in 1983 I joined NSH and began to try to get involved. I presented my first NSH Convention workshop in Little Rock, AR. I learned about the NSH, the Board of Directors, and Society governance. Freida was the Speaker of the House of Delegates and was stepping down from this position at this NSH Convention. I talked to her about this position as I was interested, and she was encouraging. I ran for the Speaker of the House of Delegates 2 years later in 1988 and won.
I also saw another quality in Freida in 1991: compassion and sympathy. My first wife had died of cancer in August 1991, and the NSH Convention was held in Orlando, FL in September the same year. When I attendedFreida ran up to me, and I still remember her telling me, “Oh Lamar, I am so sorry”!
Over time, I remembered Freida’s encouragement, and I ran for NSH Vice President. And Freida was the President of NSH, and what an excellent opportunity to serve as Vice President under Freida as President. More opportunities to learn from Freida!
I never had the opportunity to present a workshop with Frieda, but we attended similar state Histology meetings and presented lectures and workshops at the meetings for several years. Freida’s love and desire to educate histotechs continued to inspire me.
Yet another humble moment that I saw in Frieda was when she was preparing and writing her first Histotechnology textbook. At one of the ASCP grading sessions, along with Freida and others, she had brought some printing galleys for her book, and we reviewed them. She humbly asked us, “do you think that I can do this?” In 1990 she published her first book: Histotechnology A Self-Instructional Text, and preceded forward to publish four more books making a total of five textbooks!
Freida was a lady who consistently offered opportunities to techs, and she offered me a few in my career. One opportunity that I specifically recall was a couple of small contributions to her first textbook. She needed a few images of special stains that she did not have at the time, and she asked if I had these specific images, which I did, and I contributed the images. They appeared in at least three of her books. She also included some artifacts in her first book and asked if I had images of the “chrome artifact” similar to Denza Sheehan’s book. I did not have any chrome artifact images, so we tried to re-create the artifact independently, but we never could re-create it, so we decided it probably did not exist any longer.
One final quality that I learned about Freida was her down-home simplicity! I called her one day with an NSH Board question, and Margaret answered the telephone, “hold on a minute, Freida is mixing cornbread”! When Freida answered the telephone, she said, “I love cornbread”!
Freida’s contributions to the field of Histotechnology were many – five (5) textbooks, ASCP staining videos, technical publications, ASCP study guides, Kodachrome slide sets, flashcards, workbooks, serving as NSH president, NSH Education Committee Chair, workshop and lecture presenter in local, national and foreign societies and many more!
So my list of communications and conversations with Freida could continue, but I will close with these thoughts. I am so happy that I met Freida early in my career. I admired and respected her from the first time I met her. She was a very knowledgeable but caring, humble person. She exhibited some unique qualities – encouragement, simplicity, offered opportunities, inspiration, to name a few. And she had a gift of humor that few witnessed! I credit my many mentors for my career, and Freida was one of them! But the one quality that I will never forget from Freida was – “get involved with your profession”!
If you’d like to listen to Freida talk about her career, please visit our Histotech of the Decade podcast that aired in June 2020
Written by M. Lamar Jones, BS, HTL(ASCP)