?I hadn?t been to Hillsboro until I knew about the job, but we did come up and look around before we applied. It?s really nice. It seems like it is the classical idea of a small town. I grew up in sort of a small town and it wasn?t like the classical idea of a small town. Everyone is really nice here.?
Frye grew up in the Topeka area. He attended Mission Valley High School in Eskridge, outside of Topeka. When he graduated from high school, his parents moved to the Newton area.
Frye and his wife, Asia, have been married for three years and just welcomed a daughter, Abilene, on June 25. Asia is the youth minister for First Menno?nite Church in Hillsboro.
Asia received her undergraduate degree in religious studies and they found out after Timothy got the teaching job at Tabor that First Mennonite was looking for a youth minister. She?s only working quarter-time, as she?s spending most of her time with the baby.
This summer Asia also found out that she, too, has some Mennonite background.
?Her dad?s last name is Kliewer and he was from Prairie View,? Frye said. ?So she sort of knew that she was Mennonite, but it turned out that her great-great-grandfather was actually from Hillsboro. It turns out that he was a horse thief and that?s why he had to flee to Oklahoma.?
Frye attended the University of Oklahoma as a national merit scholar and finished his undergraduate and graduate degrees in mathematics at the university. He graduated with his doctorate Aug. 4 of this year.
Before coming to Tabor, he taught at Oklahoma as a graduate assistant and teaching assistant.
In spring 2007, Frye accidentally shut down the University of Oklahoma?s campus.
?It was the day after the Virginia Tech shooting and I was walking across campus with a 3-foot-long umbrella and someone mistook it for a rifle and called in a gun threat,? Frye said. ?I had no idea, because I was at the gym while the campus was shut down and then I came back and then found out that I shut down campus.
?I was talking to my wife and she worked at the Wesley Foundation, which was on campus, and I walked in and she said, ?It was you!? and I matched the description that had been going around. So I called in and the police said they were about 99 percent sure it was me.?
In his free time, Frye enjoys cooking, playing board games with his family and reading??especially comic books. His name is actually mentioned in a comic book and he helped design a symbol used in the comic book.
?It?s hard to find my name,? Frye said. ?And it looks like a nonsense phrase…. It?s been up there since December.?
One of Frye?s former roommates is going to begin writing Supergirl this month.
This semester Frye is teaching Calculus I, Multivariable and some reading and research courses. The last four weeks of this semester he will also teach a pre-calculus course.
