Controversy Follows Orange County Educator

His supporters call him a friend of the teacher, a benevolent caretaker of local schools, a loving father and family man. His opponents call him a demagogue, an eccentric and a flake. Too often, they say, he articulates the marginal and irrelevant.

His most vocal detractors accuse him of being an anti-Semite who often takes aim at Jewish organizations and who questions the severity of the Holocaust--charges he denies and labels as “scurrilous.”

Steven J. Frogue, 54, has for three decades been an instructor at Foothill High School in Tustin.

He’s also an ex-Marine, a Presbyterian deacon and a recently reelected member of the Saddleback Community College District Board of Trustees. In the Nov. 5 election, Frogue was the decisive vote-getter among the seven trustees.

More than any other facet of his public life, however, Frogue is a lightning rod for controversy. And although the criticisms he’s received would offend almost anyone, Frogue seems to relish the notoriety.

“I try to tell the truth. I try to teach the truth,” he said during a recent interview, as his students filed into class. “If that’s controversial, then so be it. Mark Twain said that if you tell the truth, you will gratify some and astonish the rest. That could be the epitaph of Steve Frogue.”

Frogue has been accused of denying the Holocaust by a former board member and several former students, who say his comments about Jews and those who died at the hands of the Nazis cross over a line of ethics, propriety and recorded fact.

In 1994, complaints from parents at Foothill High led to Frogue being transferred from his history class to a one-year assignment managing a roomful of students serving detention, according to a source close to the matter. A tenured instructor, Frogue appealed to the school board, which voted to return him to teaching. School officials declined to comment, calling it a personnel matter.

What triggered the complaint, according to the source, were comments Frogue had allegedly been making in class, including skepticism about the Holocaust and derogatory references to Asians and African Americans.

Frogue vehemently denies the charges and said his transfer from history class to detention occurred “only because it was my turn to do it.”

Roy Bauer, chairman of the Department of Humanities at Irvine Valley Community College--which the college district board oversees along with Saddleback--calls Frogue “an odd, Neanderthal presence on the board who’s expressed an interest in Holocaust denial. He’s made, and continues to make, a nuisance of himself.”

Last year, Frogue incurred the wrath of several board members and a number of professors at Irvine Valley when he questioned the teaching of a course on the Holocaust by criticizing the professor’s ties to the Anti-Defamation League of B’nai B’rith.

It is that group--the ADL--that seems to be a cause celebre for Frogue, who perceives the 83-year-old human rights organization as nothing less than a criminal violator of civil liberties and personal freedom, or, as he said in an interview, a “group of spies that actively keeps files on people . . . people like me.”

(In September, the ADL reached a tentative settlement of a federal lawsuit by groups representing Arab Americans and African Americans that alleged the ADL hired intelligence agents with police ties to gather secret information about their activities. The ADL, which has contended it broke no laws and has admitted no wrongdoing, agreed to an injunction restraining it from getting information from any state employee or officer where the ADL knows or is “reckless in failing to know” that the person disclosing the information is legally forbidden from doing so.)

Its pros and cons notwithstanding, Frogue’s critics wonder why he’s taken up so much time at numerous meetings attacking the ADL, which even his supporters admit has virtually no relevance to the otherwise mundane tasks of a community college board in Orange County.

Frogue’s high school students voice a similar complaint, saying his lectures are often angry diatribes against the ADL, revisionist views of this or that chapter of history or passionate speeches about who actually pulled the trigger on President John F. Kennedy.

Frogue’s theory of who killed Kennedy is novel indeed and somehow manages to weave together some of the key threads in a tapestry that many say is unique--or in the words of one adversary, “truly Frogueian.”

“I believe Lee Harvey Oswald worked for the ADL,” Frogue said in a half-whisper during a recent interview on the campus of Foothill High. Asked to repeat his assertion, Frogue said, “That’s right. . . . I believe the ADL was behind it.”

The assassination not only transformed U.S. history but also the life of Frogue, who says he “then and there” abandoned his intention to join the Peace Corps in favor of the U.S. Marines.

Frogue was first elected to the Saddleback board in 1992. His term was uneventful until early last year, when he began his attacks on the ADL while challenging the course on the Holocaust.

Joyce Greenspan, regional director of the Orange County and Long Beach chapter of the Anti-Defamation League, said Frogue has been “blasting the ADL for no good reason.”

“Let’s face it,” Greenspan said, “he’s hardly objective. From where I sit, he has a big agenda, which has nothing to do with a college board. If I were a voter who didn’t do my homework, and voted for this man, I’d feel betrayed. As a matter of fact, I’d feel like a real sucker.”

Despite the political storm that followed, and the charges that Frogue is both anti-Semitic and a “denier” of the number of Jews slain in the Holocaust--both of which he denies--Frogue has remained popular with voters, a corps of pay-raise-minded teachers and a majority of fellow board members.

Although he has a contentious relationship with the faculty senate at Irvine Valley College--which Frogue once called “an intellectual Spur Posse”--he consistently votes large pay raises for the district’s teachers, which Roy Bauer says “makes him a darling of the unionists . . . and always wins their endorsement. In other words, they vote their pocketbook, not their conscience.”

Frank Marmolejo, the staff diversity officer at Irvine Valley College, says he resigned his own labor negotiating position four years ago, fearing the union was “shameless and corrupt. . . . It doesn’t seem to matter to them that this man routinely makes anti-Semitic comments and exhibits behavior that is, at best, egregious. He gives them anything they want. In return, he’s petty and paranoid, and the voters of Orange County have given him a bully pulpit in the form of that board.”

Donald Smith, a Tustin school district teacher from 1970 to 1991 and past president of its teachers association, says Frogue is more “eccentric than dangerous. . . . There was an allegation that he was not prepared, or organized, and seemed to be distracted. I liked him personally, but he’s kind of a flake, kind of far-out.”

Even so, Frogue enjoys a loyal following that says he’s resented because he speaks his mind and doesn’t care whom he offends.

“Steve is a great guy who, for the most part, is both maligned and misunderstood,” said board member John Williams, a Frogue ally. “I admire and respect his intelligence and the fact that, as a fiscal conservative, he’s a vigilant protector of a citizen’s best interests.”

But Richard Prystowsky, who last year began teaching “Understanding the Holocaust” at Irvine Valley College, said he was shocked when Frogue raised questions about his course and his brief involvement with the ADL. Prystowsky once assisted the ADL on an oral history of the Holocaust.

A corps of professors came to Prystowsky’s defense, claiming Frogue’s comments were a violation of academic freedom. But Frogue’s soliloquy on the course was merely a launching pad for what followed. His tirade against the ADL took up hours and hours of open-meeting time.

Harriett Walther, a former board member who clashed repeatedly with Frogue, accuses him of being motivated by anger or antipathy toward Jews. Walther, who is Jewish, said Frogue’s comments about the ADL and Prystowsky’s course “were and are extremely hurtful” to the Jewish community.

“So be it,” Frogue said. “Let the chips fall where they may. Some people confuse the ADL with Judaism or say the ADL represents Judaism. Hey, it just isn’t true.”

Asked if he believes 6 million Jews were killed in the Holocaust, Frogue said, “Of course. It was an absolute total disaster . . . one of the most appalling acts in history.”

But when asked about his comments quoted last year in the Irvine Valley student newspaper--favorable remarks about the Costa Mesa-based Institute for Historical Review, which has been assailed by academicians around the world for questioning the number of Jews killed in the Holocaust and claiming that no Jews died in gas chambers--Frogue said, “Well, I hear that they have raised some interesting questions.”

Frogue said he chose the public life because certain questions need to be asked, and, he vowed, he’ll continue to ask them.

“People criticize me for asking too many questions at board meetings,” he said. “Well, if the Orange County Board of Supervisors had asked a few more questions, maybe we wouldn’t have been bankrupt. They just sit there like potted plants. Steve Frogue is no potted plant. Steve Frogue is a leader and a doer, and my constituents are better off for having him.”