The Original Freddy Fixer Travels Back In Time

by Paul Bass The New Haven independent

“I thought it was a myth,” a woman told Steve Driffin. ​“I didn’t know Freddy Fixer was a person.”

Driffin, a New Haven playwright and youth worker, welcomed the question. He had spent a year co-writing a play and is now preparing to stage it so that more people can learn about New Haven’s ​“Freddy Fixer,” and about what it means to be a community hero.

The play is Called Be Your Own Hero. It tells the story of Dr. Fred Smith, who in the mid-20th century delivered medical care both in Dixwell and at the city’s main hospital while serving as a housing commissioner and New Haven’s first Black police commissioner. The play will be performed Saturday Aug. 2 and Sunday Aug. 3 at the Dixwell ​“Q” Community House as part of its 100th anniversary; click here for tickets and more information.

Decades after his death Dr. Smith may have been best known for organizing, along with activist Ed Grant, the Freddy Fixer Parade and community clean-up. It started in 1962, growing into a regional event sparking communal trash pick-ups and street beautification in addition to a colorful Dixwell Avenue march drawing contingents from numerous states.

“Freddy” was a character partly inspired by Smith himself.

There’s more to his life story. That’s where Driffin came in.

Driffin’s plays have been performed on Long Wharf’s main stage as well as in New York City. The Q House commissioned him to work (by phone) with Dr. Smith’s son (who lives in Portugal) to hammer out a script to bring Dr. Smith’s story to life. The resulting script takes a late-in-life Dr. Smith back into time to ​“persuade his younger self — a bright but skeptical young man with promise — not to quit.”

“What happens with history, when it gets lost?” Driffin asked Thursday in a conversation about the show and about his own career as a playwright, on WNHH FM’s ​“Dateline New Haven” program.

“Some of the elders still know exactly who Fred Smith” was, he noted. Now he and a dozen actors and dancers and helpers will take to the stage at the Q House to make sure newer generations do, as well.

Click on the video below to watch the full discussion with Steve Driffin on WNHH FM’s ​“Dateline New Haven.” Click here to subscribe or here to listen to other episodes of ​“Dateline New Haven.”