Passion to help drives Freimiller

There’s a type of mind that, when it encounters a hardship in life, strives to escape it. But then there’s another turn of mind, too — the sort that drives right into the center of the problem and asks, “How can I help?”

For years, Camryn Freimiller thought she’d like to be a librarian. Later, she flirted with bioengineering. But then, three years ago this December, her nephew Grayson was born, and that changed everything.

“He was born with water on his brain,” said the 18-year-old Freimiller. “His mom didn’t find out until she was almost due, and he had to go straight into surgery after he was born.”

A shunt was inserted into the newborn’s brain, but the hydrocephalus had already forced its consequences on the organ’s upper ventricles. Today, Grayson lives with cerebral palsy, and is both deaf and blind and at risk for seizures. “Though after about a year of dealing with the insurance company,” said Freimiller, “Grayson was able to get a cochlear implant, so now he can hear out of one side.” And while he’ll never be able to see, continued Freimiller, he is able to detect shadows, and his parents — Freimiller’s older brother and his wife — have an accumulation of light-up toys to which the toddler responds.

“He’s a big boy now,” said Freimiller, “but, still, he can’t crawl yet. He gets one arm going but he has trouble bringing the other arm around. He has an older sister, she’s 6 or 7 now, and she loves him to death. He’ll hear her playing nearby and he’ll just smile.”

The moment of Grayson’s birth and that initial life-saving surgery — so important to the newborn boy — was also the thing that decided Freimller’s fate. Freimiller sat down with the Register on Wednesday. “I’ve decided to become a biochemist,” she said. “I really want to help people who are going through things like this. I want to be in the lab, researching medicine, finding the exact medicines that can help ease people’s pain and bring them comfort.”

Already this straight-A student has her itinerary chartered. Freimiller, one of this year’s valedictorians, plans to enter Washburn University in the fall, where she will specialize in biochemistry. After receiving her bachelor’s degree, she will pursue her PhD in the field. Doctorate in hand, Freimiller will then launch herself into the wider world of biomedical science with the hopes of landing a job at a large research institution where she can focus on the design of, as she puts it, “smarter medicines.”

FOR SOMEONE whose attention is so rigorously turned toward the future, you’re unlikely to find another Iola teenager who is at the same time so utterly at ease in the past.

And, for this, Camryn can thank her dad.

Camryn Freimiller’s father is Mark Freimiller, the founder and proprietor of Model T Haven, whose vintage car lot — a vast repository of Americana in rural Gas City — is divided into two main categories, pre-WWII cars and post-WWII cars.

Mark isn’t Camryn’s biological father — the graduating senior hasn’t seen her birth father in more than a decade — but their bond is stronger for having found each other when they might not have. “He adopted me when I was in the third grade,” said Freimiller, “but I call him my dad and I see him as my dad.”

From her years hanging around the shop, Camryn knows how to conduct minor tuneups on her own car (not a Model T in her case; rather, a Ford Fiesta). She also knows how to change her own oil. And, recently, her dad helped her replace a dead battery.

Does she have a boyfriend? “No,” Camryn says, “they’re overrated.” What she has is more valuable: “My dad recently talked me through changing a flat tire and putting on the spare. So, now, say, if I’m ever stranded on the road with a flat, I know exactly what to do.”

Besides the rich benefits that flow from Mark and his steady source of paternal love, Camryn considers herself extra lucky to have been raised in the treasure-aisles of her dad’s antique merch. See, Mark’s affection for bygone items doesn’t end with the automobile. “We have a whole room in our house dedicated to phonographs,” said Freimiller. “It’s called: The Phonograph Room. He has over a hundred phonographs — floor ones, table ones. The ones where you put the record on, and also the cylinder ones. I even have my own phonograph, except the spring broke. Anyway, the phonographs are his hobby; the cars are his job. Our house — it basically feels like a museum.”

FREIMILLER’S parents are both very pleased with their daughter’s academic prowess — “They tell me all the time how proud they are of me,” said Freimiller — but they’ve never put undue pressure on the Iola senior. “My dad just says, ‘All you have to do is try your hardest and that’s fine.’”