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	Courtesy Photo Bruce Ivins is shown during a 30th birthday party for Fregonara at Nanci and Jim Fregonara’s Frederick home in June 1983.

Former Frederick resident Jim Fregonara took a continuing education class in juggling taught by Ivins.

"I liked juggling so I stuck with it," Fregonara said in a phone interview from his West Virginia home Monday. "Bruce had founded a little group called the Frederick Jugglers and I joined that."

The group, which Fregonara said had six or seven core members, performed at area nursing homes, schools and festivals such as In the Streets and the annual Koi Festival at Lilypons Water Gardens.

"Bruce was a really good friend, a good juggler and very patient," Fregonara said. "Teaching juggling isn't very easy and Bruce was very patient with his students."

Fregonara and his wife were on vacation in Michigan when the news broke of Ivins' death and suspected connection in the anthrax attacks.

"I saw a local paper in Michigan and thought 'this can't be the Bruce I know,' but it was," he said.

The Ivins Fregonara knew was "always singing, making jokes, a very funny entertainer."

Fregonara, who worked in a lab doing cancer research, said though he socialized with Ivins and they visited each other's homes, they never discussed Ivins' work.

"I knew he worked in a lab and he knew I worked in a lab, but we knew each other socially -- I knew him on the outside, so to speak," Fregonara said.

Bruce and Diane Ivins were attempting to start a family when Fregonara met the couple; he recalled that they ultimately adopted children.

Arthur Anderson, a medical doctor, scientist, friend and former Fort Detrick colleague of Ivins, said adoption was the reason he got to know Ivins outside the work environment.

"Bruce and Diane and my wife and I adopted children around the same time," Anderson said Sunday. "Bruce had a tremendous personal warmth and had the utmost of concern and caring for his family and friends."

Ivins kept an eye out for any publication addressing adoption, and particularly independent adoptions that were overturned in courts, Anderson said. The two men shared information and concern for each other's family.

Fregonara recalled an act on Ivins' part that he said was typical of his friend's generosity and caring.

He and he wife flew into Baltimore-Washington International Airport after a vacation to find their transportation plans to get home to Frederick had fallen through.

"I called Bruce from the airport, and he dropped everything and went to Baltimore to pick us up and take us home," Fregonara said. "One phone call to Bruce, and he took care of us -- that's how he was."

Ivins helped Fregonara celebrate his 30th birthday 25 years ago. Pictures show a happy group celebrating one of life's milestones.

"I just can't believe he did what they're saying," Fregonara said. "It just doesn't seem like him at all -- it's just a totally different person."