Freshman Father

Changing diapers is not part of Harvard’s curriculum, but it was for John Wand in 1970.

Wand’s struggle to juggle academics and fatherhood inspired the made-for-TV movie “Freshman Father,” tonight at 9 on the Hallmark Channel.

“I’m greatly honored they thought my story could be the basis for something,” said Wand, 58, during a telephone interview from his Madison, N.J., home.


The summer before his freshman year at Harvard, Wand learned his high school sweetheart was pregnant. The couple married and moved from their native Boise, Idaho, to Cambridge.

“It was hard. We had come from Boise. We didn’t have much money. From Boise to Boston is like Dorothy going from Kansas to Oz,” Wand said.

Two years after their son, Robby, was born, Wand’s wife left.

“(My ex-wife) said ‘This is not the life I signed up for.’ It was a difficult decision. It didn’t play the way the movie played it,” he said.

Screenwriter Bill Wells set “Freshman Father” in the present. While names, characters and situations differ from the truth, Wand said the basic facts are there.

“In actuality, it played out over a number of years, not just freshman year,” said Wand, now an economics professor at Seton Hall University.

“If you think about coming from Idaho, the social stigma around a teenage pregnancy was greater back then,” Wand said of the early ’70s. “I think the whole concept of single fatherhood is more acceptable today.”

Drew Seeley (“I Kissed A Vampire”) and Brittney Irvin (“V”) play John and Kathy Patton, the fictional couple who mirror Wand’s experience.

A major departure from Wand’s story is the addition of John’s doting landlady (Annie Potts, “Designing Women”), who helps care for his infant son.

“There was nobody like that, unfortunately, in my life,” Wand said.

After graduating from Harvard, Wand and Robby returned to Boise. They later moved to Arlington in 1979 while Wand attended Harvard Business School.

“There is a constant pull between your job and your child. Can you take the time to coach soccer? And while I think I was a pretty good father and I tried, I wish I’d done even more to be there with Rob,” he said.

Wand remarried in 1983 and had two more children with his current wife, Beverly. His son Christopher, 25, lives in Somerville.