Beyond the classroom: Remembering Michael Fry’s lasting influence

A few years ago, Fort Lewis College student Nico Smith reached spring break knowing he was failing his history class.

His parents encouraged him to talk with his professor, Michael Fry, Ph.D. Smith was reluctant. When a student is failing, he said, talking to the professor is often the last thing they want to do.

Still, Smith returned to campus and approached Fry.

“It’s not just about you failing the class,” Fry told him. “Everyone fails if you fail. FLC fails, I fail, and you fail. Let’s make a plan and turn it around.”

The message stayed with Smith.

“Everyone is in it together,” he said.

Smith earned a C in the class. Although he continued to struggle during the semesters that followed, he considers that conversation a turning point.

“That was when I really began ‘doing college’ and taking those words to heart,” Smith said.

It was one of countless moments in Fry’s 35 years at FLC when he gave a student more than a lesson in history. He gave them his time, his attention, and the assurance that their success mattered to him.

Fry, a longtime professor of history and Fulbright Fellow, died earlier this summer.

For colleagues, Fry’s commitment to students was evident in the time he gave them, often without recognition or expectation.

“Michael Fry was a consummate colleague and a devoted teacher,” said Paul Kuenker, Ph.D., chair and associate professor of history at FLC.

Fry organized special writing sessions at the library where students could work on major projects together. He gave up time on weekends to help students improve their writing. He mentored seniors on research projects and traveled with them to conferences where they presented their work.

In his final years at FLC, Fry also stepped outside his academic specialty to teach a course the department needed. He led students on a spring break trip to Mexico City, sharing his love of history, food, travel, and culture.

“He delighted our students with his life stories and his passion for studying the past,” Kuenker said. “With one of the longest tenures at the College and the longest in the department, Michael Fry is synonymous with history at Fort Lewis College.”

For alumna Lisa Munro, Ph.D., Fry’s influence has lasted more than two decades.

Munro studied history at FLC from 2001 to 2004, initially focusing on U.S. history. She enrolled in Fry’s courses to better understand history beyond the United States. At the same time, she was studying Spanish, and Fry’s classes opened a new way of seeing Latin America and the United States’ relationship with the region.

Fry specialized in modern Central America and Guatemala. His courses explored difficult subjects, including dictatorships, human rights abuses, and the role of the United States in the region.

For Munro, the experience changed how she understood the world.

“It was a story about history in which the United States was not necessarily the hero,” she said. “That will rock your world. Suddenly, you start seeing things in very different ways.”

Fry encouraged students to understand Latin America on its own terms, Munro said, rather than viewing the region solely through a U.S. perspective.

“He was so generous with his time and his knowledge,” she said. “He made Latin America seem not like some place out there, but a place we had good reasons to understand.”

After graduating from FLC, Munro joined the Peace Corps and served in Guatemala. She later earned a doctorate in Latin American history, a path she describes as distinctly “Michael Fry-inspired.”

Fry continued to support her throughout graduate school. He asked about her dissertation, read her published work, and introduced her to other scholars at academic conferences. Over time, their relationship evolved from professor and student to colleagues connected by a shared passion for Latin American history.

“When I published articles, he would say, ‘I would love to read your work,’” Munro said. “It started to feel collegial. Suddenly, we were not professor and student anymore. We were colleagues in this work.”

Munro now lives in Mexico, continuing a journey that began in Fry’s classroom.

“Education is so much more than information delivery,” she said. “When education becomes a truly transformative experience, it is based on relationships. Michael cared about his students, and he genuinely cared that they learned.”

Fry’s scholarship reflected the same curiosity he brought to the classroom. He was the author of the “Historical Dictionary of Guatemala,” a guide to the country’s history, culture, politics and people. In spring 2025, he received FLC’s Roger Peters Distinguished Professor Award in recognition of his teaching, mentorship, scholarship, and service.

For Munro, his greatest legacy may be the moment when a student encounters an idea that permanently changes how they see the world.

“There were always those moments with him when students’ eyes would get big, and you knew their minds had been opened,” she said. “You never see the world the same way again. I would want that for everyone, and I was so lucky I got that.”

More than 20 years after leaving FLC, Munro still thinks about Fry as a scholar, teacher, and mentor. Like Smith, she remembers a professor who believed learning was a shared endeavor and who remained invested in his students long after they left his classroom.

“I feel like he is still there and is still this massive influence,” Munro said. “I think he would approve of where I am now. I feel like he is still cheering me on from somewhere.”

The Fort Lewis College community will gather to honor Fry and the lasting influence he had on generations of students, colleagues, and friends. A celebration of his life will be held at 4:30 pm on September 17 in the Vallecito Room.