How the past helps retired professor, 97, plan for tomorrow

Professor Emeritus of Business Administration Cedric Fricke observes his surroundings to stay ahead of what’s coming next. It’s a life skill he’s honed over the past 100 or so years.

“To create new ways of doing things, you need to pay attention,” says Fricke, 97. “If you rely solely on tradition or only follow what people tell you, you are selling yourself and the people around you short.”

Fricke is a UM-Dearborn legend in the College of Business. He’s one of the university’s 20 founding professors; he was hired in June 1960 to develop the accounting and finance curricula. In the early 1960s, Fricke created a computerized business simulation to train future business leaders, and he says this made UM-Dearborn the fourth institution in the nation to do so, after IBM, Harvard and UCLA. In the 1970s, Fricke was among the first professors on campus to record lecture tapes, introducing a hybrid-style course to accommodate busy students.

Now accounting and finance are the two most in-demand majors at the College of Business, business simulations and project-based learning are standard, and hybrid courses have become the norm. How did Fricke anticipate today’s educational trends more than 50 years ago? “The Great Depression,” says Fricke, who was born in 1928 and grew up on a struggling family farm near Benton Harbor. “Living through that awful time helped me stay alert and gave me the determination to find better ways to do things.”

Fricke retired from UM-Dearborn in 1995, but continues to apply his keen business sense into his everyday life. At his senior living community in Plymouth, he prefers discussing the U.S. economy with residents and staff over playing bingo. Fricke often talks about his weekly visits to Deadwood Restaurant and Bar in Northville, which he treats as a case study. Six months ago, the restaurant had a one-hour wait. Today, Fricke can get right in. He’s noticed it at a few other favorite eateries too, likely meaning people have less discretionary spending (in addition to the rise of food delivery platforms like DoorDash). But there is still good news: “The parking lot is full so it’s not dire at this point, but there’s a trend I’m noticing and keeping an eye on,” he says. Americans are getting overextended with bills and credit, he adds, and he’s not sure how many more recessions can be overcome by consumer spending.

In Fricke fashion, he starts proposing alternative ways to slow inflation to reduce the threat of a recession. He suggests raising corporate tax rates a fraction of a percent when the Consumer Price Index — which measures the average change over time in the prices consumers pay for goods and services — is greater than 2% annually. “When inflation gets to a certain point and the businesses pass costs along costs to customers, the businesses should be taxed in an effort to get closer to equilibrium,” he insists, as the 1955 Doris Day song “Que Será, Será” plays over the facility’s speakers.

Fricke has built a life in contrast to the lyrics in that Doris Day song: “Whatever will be, will be. The future's not ours to see.” He says there are telltale signs about what the future will bring and they can be observed by paying attention to people’s behavior and watching financial trends. Pursuing options made a big impact for Fricke, personally. He says going to college at the University of Michigan gave the ability to transform his life following the Great Depression — and he wants to use his education and experience to continue helping people today.

Fricke began telling his family he’d attend college at UM-Ann Arbor at age 5; he saw his father work from sunrise to sunset to harvest and peddle vegetables without making a dime. “I don’t know how I even first heard of U-M — I just knew that education was going to be my way off that farm. I figured that if I wanted a different job, I’d need the education and training,” he says, adding that he made it happen by planning, working and saving money. The day following his 1945 Benton Harbor High School graduation, he packed his bags and left his parents’ home for Ann Arbor. After earning an undergraduate degree in engineering in 1949 and an MBA in 1950, also at UM-Ann Arbor, then serving in the U.S. Army during the Korean War from 1950 to 1952, he looked for ways to use his education to make a difference in the world. At first, he worked in industry and conducted business research forecasting for General Motors. But he wanted to have a broader reach. 

“At General Motors, I’d create my own financial models to forecast where the auto industry was headed. We didn’t have available data like we do today, so I’d look at the price of raw steel, the new orders for cardboard, since that’s how things were packaged, and the number of freight car loadings to predict what was on the horizon,” he says. “I was good at it, but I wanted more of a challenge and to make a difference in people’s lives. I thought that teaching and research would be a better use of the education I was lucky to get.”

Fricke made a forecast of his own in 1955 to see if working as an educator made business sense — using the U.S. census and college enrollment data, he looked at the number of Baby Boomers in junior high and compared it to the number of people enrolled in graduate school. “The demand was going to be greater than the supply within five years. The door was open for me to become a professor,” he explains, recalling that moment with a smile. “I didn’t know where I’d end up, but I knew I’d be helping the next generation.”

He went back to UM-Ann Arbor for his PhD in finance. He graduated in 1959, the same year the UM-Dearborn campus opened. “Even though I taught the summer after campus opened, the administration included me as one of the 20 original faculty members,” Fricke says. In the early days, Fricke’s classroom had eight to 10 students per section. To teach six sections, the university offered Fricke $3,000 a year, which is about $33,000 in today’s purchasing power. “They knew the salary wasn’t that great, so they told me that they’d throw in paying for my medical expenses if I retired from U-M. I was around 30 at the time and it seemed so far off, but I figured it wouldn’t hurt,” he says. “Well, I’m 97 and going pretty strong. Turns out that was one of the smartest things I ever did.”

Fricke recalls the collaborative spirit among faculty in UM-Dearborn’s early years. Professors from all disciplines worked together and formed close personal bonds. Fricke and his late wife Janet hosted holiday parties attended by faculty and university leaders, and their young sons Karl and Bill played with other faculty members’ children.

“There was a great deal of camaraderie. We were a new campus and our objective was to make it the best possible — that meant that we had to be strong in engineering, we had to be strong in business and we had to be strong in liberal arts. Then, of course, when we got education, we had to be strong in education. We became strong by working together and learning from each other,” he says. “UM-Dearborn was built on this interdisciplinary approach. I’m in financial economics, but it’s good for me to have an understanding about what questions moral philosophers would ask and how they would go about getting answers to their questions. Getting a variety of perspectives is the true meaning of education and we wanted our students to have that.”

Fricke incorporated energy and creativity into his teaching too. He’d bring in a crystal ball to help add humorous elements to complicated concepts like economic forecasting. And when teaching his accounting students about inventory control, Fricke put on a white food service smock and pretended to run a deli counter while the students solved inventory issues he was hypothetically running into. “At the end, I’d pull out a rubber chicken and ask what we could do with the leftover meat. They’d go wild,” he says with a laugh. “Sometimes the concepts can be dull and hard to grasp in the textbook — but once a student sees how it can apply in a real situation, it clicks.”

Even today, when reflecting on the past, Fricke looks to the future. He supports 10 UM-Dearborn students each year through the Dr. Cedric Fricke Endowed Internship Opportunity Fund and continues to look for ways to contribute to his field — he’s currently working on a patent for a new financial model designed to reduce taxes on derivatives. Fricke, who uses a wheelchair, also has a bucket list that includes a hot-air balloon ride and adaptive paragliding.

“Keep learning and exploring,” Fricke says. “No matter your age, what you do matters. If you can, help others. This generation needs all the help they can get — just like the boy who left that southwest Michigan farm 80 years ago.”

Story by Sarah Tuxbury