Some students might recognize him as the announcer of “Sharing the Stage” or fashionable icon of bow ties and vests. Since 1990, Fred Strong has been a part of our Seattle Academy community working as a teacher, the Head of Middle School and the Dean of Faculty for Arts and Athletics, but what most students don’t know is that since 1990, Fred has been a globe collector.
“Globes‒they’re just works of art,” Fred says. “I just find them very aesthetically pleasing.” Fred began his collection with a small globe centered in a glass triangle from a little gift shop at the London Tate Museum in 1985 (pictured above).
Since then, Fred has acquired more globes through gifts or thrift store finds. From a clay flat globe, his then fourth grade daughter made, to a delicate glass carving, Fred has collected over forty different globes. His personal favorite is a 1920’s globe found in a thrift store. “Globes tell a story,” Fred explains, “They’re kind of a snapshot of the way the world was arranged politically at the time the globe was made.”
Though we as students aren’t as aware of Fred’s growing collection, the faculty sure are. Mindy Watson, who shares an office with Fred, says her own favorite is a globe from Africa shaped like an egg with hand painted words and countries.
According to Fred, many teachers have added and received from his collection. Franscoise Deeg-Legal and her daughter gave Fred a handmade globe cup while David Johns received one of Fred’s biggest globes for his math class. Evidence of Fred’s globe collection can be seen throughout the SAAS community.
The last globe we talked about, and one of Fred’s favorites, was the Fuller Globe (Pictured Above). Buckminster Fuller was a philosopher and architect and invented a globe folded into the geometric shape icosahedron which can unfold into two dimensions displaying a flattened map. “The thing that’s interesting is that it shows how all the landmasses or continents are connected, all linked as one,” Fred explains.
Although Fred’s globes are works of art or creative expressions, to him they also show connections, representing how we are all related, all one unity.