Christian L. Frock

Keynote Script
Morris Frock American Legion Post No. 42, est. 1919
Hagerstown, Maryland
11 November 2024, Veterans Day Ceremonies

Meditation for Peace
I’d like to begin with a moment of silence wherein we collectively envision a global ceasefire – starting right now.

Introduction
HELLO. My name is Christian L. Frock. Morris Frock was my great-grandfather’s beloved older brother. My family first settled here in Hagerstown 250 years ago and they were here for 125 years until my family left Hagerstown for Philadelphia after Morris Frock was murdered in WWI.

I was born outside Chicago and raised in California. Though the Frock name is all over Maryland, my family hasn’t lived here since this post was founded. To join the post, I proved I belong to my family with a digital photo of a handwritten note my great grandfather carried in his wallet, listing all his children’s, grandchildren’s, and great grandchildren’s birthdays, including mine and my brothers.

My father adored his grandfather, whom he called Pop Pop. They spoke every week early on Sunday mornings. Coming to the post has been like getting to go home to my family a century later. The American Story is the story of my family going back centuries, especially here on the Atlantic seaboard. I am related to everyone, including several presidents. My ancestry is extensively documented on both sides – not because of who I am, but because of who they were, including heroes like my great grand uncle Morris Frock, an original Iron Mike and the first of the Devil Dogs.

Marilyn Hembrock, Auxiliary President, invited me here today to talk with you about Morris Frock, my family, and what brings me to Hagerstown now, offering to serve those who have served.

Gratitude
Thank you to everyone at Post 42 for welcoming me, a West Coast foundling wandering Maryland, arriving at the post out of the blue, after the intense isolation of the coronavirus global public health crisis. This is not my first time showing up in a small town. I am familiar with your stages of bewilderment. I try not to be too large or too loud right away, but here I am today, keynoting.

Thank you to all of you here who have served today – it’s a privilege for me to be here before you now. The valley is spectacularly beautiful every single drive and the post is a very special place for me to be, obviously, because I am a civilian.

My talk today is dedicated to my younger brother, William David Frock, the one true soldier in my family, a true product of the Air Force and his para-rescue training. Always the calm first responder, everywhere.

To craft my talk with you today, I imagined myself speaking to many different authorities represented here in this place, including one of my early matriarchs, Elizabeth Frock, an early founder of Maryland who came over the Cumberland Trail in a covered wagon. I am especially mindful of the layered histories in Hagerstown and the surrounding area, beyond that of my own family, from the ghosts of Antietam to the untold stories of enslaved Africans and African Americans, to the Indigenous legacy of the Massowomeck. With these histories in mind today, I’d like to acknowledge another legendary veteran in my family, my maternal grandfather’s grandfather, Albert C. Ellithorpe, who was hired by Abraham Lincoln to organize the first multi-racial front of the civil war on the trans-Mississippi frontier. My family has always been invested in democracy.

Morris Frock
I’d like to now tell you a little about Morris Frock – and to share that my understanding is informed by historians in my family, my aunt and my father’s cousin, and, of course, by the Internet. Morris Frock was first sent to serve in Haiti at the age of 17. He was killed in the Battle of Belleau Wood in France, for which he posthumously received two Silver Stars and France’s Croix de Guerre. He is remembered in the very beautiful Memorial Chapel at Aisne-Marne American Cemetery built on what was the front line of the American forces during the Battle of Belleau Wood. Roy Frock, my great-grandfather was around 12 or 13 when his older brother enlisted. It has always been very important oral history in my family that Morris Frock enlisted as a conscientious objector to carry messages in battle – he did not carry a weapon.

What came after the two silver stars, the Croix de Guerre, and the creation of the post for my family – Morris Frock’s father was murdered. My great-great grandmother fled Maryland with her young children. My great grandfather spent his teenage years in Philadelphia and within a few years fell in love with and married the daughter of prominent, storied Ashkenazi Jewish refugee – rankling antiSemites, including many in his own family.

About Me
Fast forward a century – I stand before you a picture of the freedom my great grand uncle fought for in France, and that my great-great grandmother fled fascist Germany to find in the United States.

I arrived in Maryland in 2019 with twenty years of experience as a writer, curator, and educator – it was my dream to come to the Washington DC area and transition to terrestrial radio. Six weeks after we left, California was walloped with wildfires and smoke; five months later covid struck. I also hoped to work on a doctorate degree that would allow me to roll my research interests into new disciplines. In California I spent many years writing about the intersection of art, politics, and public life – a lot of my work was about public violence and mass gun violence, in particular. I have a few theories about how the humanities, and music in particular, might be leveraged in peacebuilding and/or to counter extremism – this is what I would like to bring to my doctoral studies.

I am also someone who believes veterans know how to build peace. One of my favorite uncles, Delanos Lowell, survived the invasion of Normandy as a paraplegic – my paralyzed uncle was so independent, as a child I didn’t know he was considered a person with disabilities.

Foremost among my interests in coming to Maryland was to connect with Morris Frock American Legion Post No 42 to collaborate with veterans on the development of my ideas, including partnerships with my Bethesda neighbor Walter Reed and the creation of a radio station for the humanities. My reason for wanting to get into radio likely goes back one hundred years, to the origination of this post – my family has been harassed with radio gaslighting for generations. In leaving California and coming to the DC area, it was my theory that I could break something broken about radio (and the world) by going into radio.

I believe skilled surveillance of my father’s family began here at the post more than one hundred years ago – and that what began with early experiments in radio is now far more sophisticated and invasive with the use of satellites.

Surveillance of my mother’s family likely started in Chicago around the same time, owing to not only Ellithorpe’s multi-racial organizing but also his technological brilliance and his innovation of the original elevator brake system still in universal use today.

Owing to outside interests in both sides of my family, I believe I have been the subject of surveillance since birth and that I tripped my lifelong surveillance when I left California to come to the Washington DC area in 2019. A lot of artists took to the task of gaslighting me to expose gaslighting for me. Something that might have once been the purview of a few authority figures is now searchable on the Internet – my international students from Asia has been very wily in how they have let me know I am observed at home online. Because my surveillance is fed into video games and popular entertainment, children have been the easiest to crack, which I don’t think the Intelligence community could have anticipated.

I have moved seven times in the last five years, mostly to outwit my bullies. I’ve also peeled away a clear understanding of gaslighting and how we are surveilled to pass onto my children. I have learned to live with learning to live with it.

There is a legendary story about my great great great grandfather Albert Ellithorpe seizing a confederate camp and commandeering everything, including a soldier’s journal, which he flipped over and began using as his own war journal by writing, “The tables turned.” I feel the same way today, standing before you now. The tables have turned.

Final Note of Thanks
It’s not really an exaggeration to say I was chased here when I first turned up. I was being harassed by a lot of different people and I was overwhelmed by the negative attention. When I came to the post, I came looking for allies who hold their beliefs in freedom and dignity as firmly as Morris Frock did.

I also came to be of service to the people here who have served. As much as I would like to rope you into my projects and ideas for the humanities, I would also like to simply thank you for your service, for upholding the legacy of Morris Frock – and for being here, still, in service to the good that persists. Thank you, sincerely.