My Spiritual Brother, Frank
Dr. Linda Silverman
Forty-four years ago, I was teaching a course on “Creative Mathematics” for the University for Youth at the University of Denver, when the Chair of the Sociology Department decided to observe. I had no idea why. That day changed my life. Soon afterward, Frank Falk and I were engaged in a study of teacher burnout in gifted education. I persuaded him to serve with me on the Board of the Foundation for Advancement of Talent in Education (F.A.T.E.), an ill-fated organization that tried to raise money to support gifted education.
And then magic happened. November of 1979, on my way to my first NAGC conference, I sat on the plane next to Sam Osipow, Editor of Contemporary Psychology, who invited me to review the book, New Voices in Counseling the Gifted. The book contained two fabulous chapters on Dabrowski’s theory by Michael Piechowski and Kay Ogburn-Colangelo. Excitedly, I said to Frank, “You’ve got to read this!” The theory ignited him. For the rest of his life, he poured his capacious energy into the study, research, and advancement of Dabrowski’s theory of positive disintegration.
In 1980, Frank organized the Dabrowski Study Group at the University of Denver, a joint effort of the Departments of Sociology and Education (primarily Gifted Education). He collected all Dabrowski’s writings. We met weekly, even during holidays, to study the theory and conduct research. One summer, we had 40 participants from the U.S. and Canada. Frank obtained permission from the University of Denver to create the Emotional Development Office in Spruce Hall. From 1980 to 1987, the Dabrowski Study Group produced 60 papers. To keep Dabrowski’s theory alive, in 1986 the group incorporated as the public nonprofit Institute for the Study of Advanced Development (ISAD). Frank signed the application. In 1989, the group gave birth to Advanced Development, the first journal on gifted adults.
Even after he left DU, Frank remained immersed in Dabrowski’s theory. He developed the Overexcitability Questionnaire II (OEQ-II) and validated it while he was Chair of he Department of Sociology and Anthropology at the University of Akron. During that time, Frank volunteered to become ISAD’s Director of Research. He proudly signed his correspondence with that title. We re-united in 1990, when we were invited to provide training workshops on rating overexcitabilities at the University of Ashland. We continued to offer these workshops all over the country for the next several years, producing considerable research. In 1991, several of us who attended the training workshop in Ashland, Ohio met directly afterwards in Columbus, and formed The Columbus Group, who developed the Dabrowskian-flavored construct of giftedness as asynchronous development.
Frank, Nancy Miller, and I organized the 10th Dabrowski Congress in Denver in 2012. At the following Congress in Canmore, Alberta, Canada, we decided to resurrect the Dabrowski Study Group in Denver. Frank convened the monthly meetings and sent out readings. During the pandemic, we switched to meeting on Zoom, which enabled Michael Piechowski and Michele Kane to participate in Wisconsin, and Truus van der Kaaij from The Netherlands.
Frank and I were a team. We became passionate about Dabrowski’ theory and collaborated on many presentations and publications. The consummate statistician, Frank did the statistical analyses on all my projects and papers. He analyzed the data to create the Visual-Spatial Identifier, as well as the data on the NAGC national study that led to the development of NAGC’s position statement on “Use of the WISC-IV for Gifted Identification.” He created a databank in SPSS of more than 1,100 of the 6,500 gifted children tested at GDC/ISAD. Frank was never paid for all his hard work. It was a labor of love. It’s hard to envision how we can continue our research on giftedness without him.
This week, Catherine Zakoian texted me, “You two seemed like deeply connected siblings to me.” I replied, “Yes. That’s exactly right.” I’ve lost a brother. I miss him terribly. And I am so very grateful that he walked into my life 44 years ago and supported me in countless ways all those years.
