Walter Fremont

Walter Fremont
Walter Fremont, c. 2000
Born	(1924-07-20)July 20, 1924 Terre Haute, Illinois, U.S.
Died	January 7, 2007(2007-01-07) (aged 82) Greenville, South Carolina, U.S.
Cause of death	amyotrophic lateral sclerosis
Resting place	Graceland East Memorial Park, Greenville, South Carolina
Education	University of Dayton; University of Wisconsin-Madison; Penn State University
Occupation	educator
Employer	Bob Jones University
Title	Dean, School of Education
Political party	Republican
Board member of	The Wilds
Spouse(s)	Gertrude Reed

Walter Gilbert Fremont, Jr. (July 20, 1924 – January 7, 2007) was dean of the School of Education, Bob Jones University (1953–1990) and “a seminal force in the inauguration and development of the Christian school movement.”

Fremont was born in Terre Haute, Indiana but was largely reared in Wilmette, Illinois and Southern Hills, a suburb of Dayton, Ohio. A child of the Depression, Fremont remembered his family having a maid before the crash but afterward having too little money to buy coal. Eventually the senior Fremont scrabbled back to economic prosperity and by doing so helped to inculcate in his son a belief in persistence, that “once you start something, you don’t quit.”

As a child, Fremont was popular, athletic, and mechanically inclined. During World War II, he was drafted and assigned by the Army to study mechanical engineering at Carnegie Institute of Technology. He then served as an engineering instructor and later as the supervisor of a mobile machine shop in Europe.

Following his discharge, Fremont earned an education degree from the University of Dayton (1947) and a master of science in curriculum development from the University of Wisconsin (1949). In 1947 he married Gertrude Reed, a nursing student; they had three children.

Fremont became an evangelical Christian in 1941. Even as a teenager, he made an interdenominational Bible study the focus of his spiritual and social life. In 1950, with one year of GI Bill benefits remaining, Fremont decided to study Bible at fundamentalist Bob Jones University in Greenville, South Carolina, because of the University’s reputation for “instilling soul-winning fervor” into its students. Fremont was immediately asked to teach educational psychology and taught both semesters while taking thirty hours of Bible courses.

The following year he became a full-time member of the education faculty eventually teaching courses in psychology, counseling, and educational administration. Fremont was a popular teacher, humorous, dramatic, acrobatic, and wildly enthusiastic. Meanwhile, he also taught Sunday school, engaged in street preaching, and held Bible studies at a local high school.