Student makes life of helping others

Thursday, Nov. 10, 2005

Our Neighbors

With a lifelong record of volunteering, Kim Fritter, 23, now wants to make helping others her career.

The Brunswick resident has narrowed her goal to a career in oncology, a medical field in which she said she aspires to assist cancer patients by researching alternative treatment options to chemotherapy.

All four of Fritter’s grandparents died of the disease. Fritter said witnessing her grandmother struggle with chemotherapy treatments, which weakens patients and often causes severe hair loss, tailored her plans of becoming a medical doctor to one who specializes in cancer treatments.

Last year, Fritter volunteered at the Frederick County Health Department in the Cancer Outreach Program. Now enrolled in core classes at Hood College that are required for entrance to medical school, Fritter has been busy this year preparing to apply to schools such as Johns Hopkins in Baltimore.

Fritter earned a bachelor’s degree in psychology and a minor in biology from Hood in May. By earning a spot on the dean’s list all four years and maintaining a 3.5 grade point average, Fritter received the Edenia Guillermo Award last semester, presented annually to a senior Hispanic student who achieved the highest academic record in four years of study.

The prize was established in 1983 to honor Guillermo, who taught Spanish at Hood from 1975 to 1983.

Eric Kindahl, a biology professor at Hood, said Fritter was one of his best students in his evolution and ecology course last year. He recalled her presentation on the evolution of a specific breed of butterflies.

‘‘She was very conscientious and very interested in what we were doing,” Kindahl said. ‘‘Her work was much more sophisticated than I would have expected.”

Born in Washington, D.C., Fritter moved to Brunswick when she was 3 years old and still resides in the same house she knew as a youngster. Fritter remembers playing kickball with her neighbors in a nearby field now divided into lots for homes.

Fritter joined the Brunswick area Girl Scouts daisy troop at age 9 and remained with the organization for several years. She played softball on local teams and performed with the pom-pom squad before joining Brunswick’s swim team.

At Brunswick High School, Fritter was a member of the National Honor Society and the Future Business Leaders of America, where she gathered goods for ‘‘Secret Santa” gifts to needy local families. As a member of the school’s track and field team, she competed in the hurdle events at the meets.

Fritter has competed in the Miss Frederick pageant for the last three years, performing songs and dances choreographed by her sister.

Fritter has also appeared as an extra in movie productions such as ‘‘The Visiting” and ‘‘Ladder 49” and television programs such as ‘‘Head of State.”

Now, Fritter invests most of her spare time volunteering. Recently, she served as a student service leader for Brunswick Middle School.

And she plans to work at hotlines with the volunteer network at the Heartly House, which serves victims of domestic violence in Frederick County. She’s also planning a volunteer stint with the Maryland Department of Aging, which partners volunteers with senior citizens with few nearby relatives.

‘‘There’s a lot of people who have no one to talk to,” Fritter said. ‘‘They get kind of lonely.”

Eclectic neighbor has positive vision for neighborhood

Saskia Van Oot’s home is bursting with creativity — flamingoes crowd a bathroom and another room in the basement as her blues band practices nearby. Various costumes and puppets, used in her singing telegram and birthday party business, jam into a nearby closet, not far from a computer on which she publishes community newsletters, keeping track of Urbana’s news and developments.

Van Oot, 50, was raised as a pacifist, and believes peace makes the world a better place. So when she and her husband, husband Robert Nuckolls, moved to Urbana six years ago, they knew that they wanted to help start a close community.

‘‘To me, neighborhood means being a good neighbor,” she said. ‘‘I never looked the word up in the dictionary, probably should, but I said, ‘OK, we’re here and everyone has their own lives, but there are ways to be connected.’”

As a member of the Urbana Civic Association, Van Oot decided that her neighbors and friends should be informed about community news. So, she started writing and printing newsletters from her home computer when the Urbana Region Plan was being debated and finalized in 2003, and continued to cover community issues.

Sue Waterman, outgoing president of the Urbana Civic Association, said the newsletter has been a great way to get residents together.

‘‘She hand-delivered them to everyone in the community, and there are about 200 homes out here in Sugarloaf,” Waterman said. ‘‘There’s the newsletter and e-mail lists for neighbors, but also she started a program where they will make dinners for neighbors that may not be able to do it themselves.”

Van Oot wants to help Urbana be the best community it can be, and she shares her concerns about that community’s growth in her newsletter.

‘‘We really don’t have the basic infrastructure in place for all this building,” she said, ‘‘and the traffic is just horrible... There are just so many things going on that are worth looking into and talking about.”

Van Oot said her newsletter also serves other purposes — recognizing special events and finding trustworthy help around the house. ‘‘We gathered everything from a good plumber to a mechanic to a tree-cutter and for the neighbors, the kids were even advertising to be a babysitter, walk your dog or house-sit while you’re away,” she said.

Waterman said that everything from birthdays to births to graduations were also mentioned in the newsletters.

‘‘I can’t fix the whole world, I can only make my little neighborhood as happy and involved as possible.”

That was also her goal when she first started performing in a children’s theater company after studying theater and drama in college.

She visits schools in Delaware twice each week to teach drama and theater workshops for students from kindergarten through high school.

Now, Van Oot is happy living in Urbana, playing in a blues band and entertaining crowds of all ages.

‘‘Life is too short not to embrace every moment and smile,” she said.

For the full text of all ‘‘Our Neighbors” stories published in The Gazette this week, go to www.Gazette.net and click on the community.