Charles Gefrorer

After graduating from Penncrest, I got my BA in German and teaching certificate from Thiel College in western PA. I spent my junior year at a university in Germany and was in Berlin a year after the Wall went up.I spent Easter 1963 in Jerusalem after travelling through Greece, Egypt (climbed the Great Pyramid),Jordan, Syria, Lebanon and Turkey.  I accepted an invitation from the Peace Corps for a project in India and worked over there 1965-66.  I got a job in September1967, teaching German at Interboro High School and spent 31 wonderful years there. I took my Students on 12 Easter Trips to Germany/Austria/Switzerland  and in 1984, began a series of month-long school exchanges with a high school in Krefeld, Germany(1984-1997).  Retired in 1998 and travelled the world: Sweden, Finland, Norway, Cambodia, Laos, Vietnam, India, Nepal, China, Tibet, Kenya(twice), Tanzania, Australia, Chile, Easter Island, Turkey and Russia.  Went around the world in 1970, visiting many exotic locales including Iran and Afghanistan.  I could give you tours of the Taj Mahal with my eyes closed. I was my Students’ personal guide through southern Germany many times over . Some health problems and financial decline put an end to the travelling in 2007. I was inducted that year into the Interboro Hall of Fame.  I live quietly now in a small house in the edge of the woods, looking down into a wooded creek valley on a part of what was our family farm. I have become the (unofficial) historian of Edgmont Township in recent years.

Highlights of my Life might be: growing up on a working Farm, friends and activities at Penncrest, college fraternity and the junior year abroad, Peace Corps in India, 31 Years of teaching German to some wonderful "kids" at Interboro, Papal audience (John XXIII) and Franciscan Pilgrimage to Rome & Assisi (and ME a Methodist!), standing on top of the Great Pyramid, walking among the Moai on Easter Island, visiting Grenada & Toledo (Spain), wandering through the markets of Marrakech & Fez, the Taj by moonlight, Katmandu (as it USED to be), petting koalas & Tasmanian Devils in Australia, riding camels in Egypt and elephants in India, the wondrous beauty of Bavaria, living on a houseboat in Kashmir, getting inducted into Interboro's Hall of Fame, for all my dear friends (I am truly blessed), finally getting my first computer in 2009 (and becoming "addicted" to e-mails and FaceBook).