CityView Magazine

WOMAN S A APART By Nomee Landis usan Franzblau has never been afraid to go looking for a good adventure. Adventure brought her to Fayetteville 18 years ago – along with a need to find a tenure-track teaching position in a city far-removed from the long winters of upstate New York. And her seeker’s heart will spirit her away again early next month. In early June, Franzblau will pack up her Scion and steer it west for a three- week cross-country journey with her long-time partner, Elva Trevino, which will take her back to California and the family that has been waiting for her return for a long time. At 67, she’s ready to go home. will tell you she is opposed to almost all theories in psychology, even though she is a psychologist. She will say she is a round peg in a square hole and that there have been times here in Fayetteville when her differences have isolated her from her more conservative and traditional neighbors. “I always feel like an outsider here,” Franzblau said. “That is one of the reasons I’m leaving. I’m lonely.” She fretted a bit about revealing too much of herself and her past. She worried that providing more than a tame accounting of her life would alienate her further in this community she has called home for so long, even though she is leaving it. “All of those things that Yet even after Franzblau departs, her influence will linger across this community, from Fayetteville State University, where she has taught psychology all of these years, to the city’s heart – its historic downtown – where she has lived since she purchased and renovated the building at 234 Hay St., in 1996. That building now houses her yoga practice, Om Yoga Studio, and her home, a loft apartment above the studio. “Some people will probably be happy I’m gone, I suspect,” Franzblau said one evening over a glass of pinot grigio at Pierro’s, across Hay Street from her home. “Somebody told me once that people either love me or hate me. I don’t think there are people who are indifferent to me. There are lots who will be sad. There will be some who will not be.” Franzblau will tell you she has never been of the mainstream. She is a radical, and her politics lean far to the left. She are interesting about me are the things you can’t write,” she said. Someday she would like to write a book about her life. Franzblau grew up in the Bronx, in New York City. By age 21, she was married to a well-traveled, Jewish rabbi named Marty Sofer, who was 18 years her senior and they were living in Hollywood. “I thought I was very old, very sophisticated and worldly,” she said. She was, in reality, young and naive, and she did not know who she was. CityViewNC.com | 57

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