JUDGE JOHN FRAZIER ’67 RETURNING TO CU AS HOMECOMING PARADE GRAND MARSHAL

By Tammie Toler Presley

ATHENS - Concord University is eager to welcome John Frazier '67 home this October, as he serves as the grand marshal for the university's 2025 Homecoming Parade for the weekend of Oct. 9-11.

"We're proud to honor John as this year's grand marshal and excited to have him back on campus," said Blake Farmer, director of alumni and donor relations. "John's commitment and respect for Concord is unparalleled. We appreciate his long-term support of Concord and the pride he takes in being a Mountain Lion."

As grand marshal, Frazier will lead the Homecoming parade at 6 p.m. on Thursday, Oct. 9, along Vermillion Street, concluding at the Callaghan Stadium parking lot, just ahead of the annual bonfire celebration in The Valley.

"I felt very privileged to receive that invitation, and I look forward to the parade," Frazier said. "When I was at Concord, I was in a fraternity, and we participated in the parade a couple of times. It was kind of wild, a bunch of young guys trying to build a float."

At 80, the 1967 Concord alumnus holds the university in extremely high regard for many reasons-"the people, the fellow students, the professors, which I think provided me and everybody that was there at that time a great academic education, just the campus, which used to have the name The Campus Beautiful."

"It was just a wonderful place to be for a young person like me that came from a family that had never had anybody to graduate from college," Frazier said recently.

He shared that he essentially followed a dear friend, one year older than him, to Concord because he was uncertain of the best school or course of study.

"He and I roomed the first year together," Frazier said.

"I was basically following him. He was one year ahead of me, and I had no idea what I wanted to major in. He was majoring in accounting, and I said, 'OK. I'll do that,'" the man who later became West Virginia's Ninth Circuit judge recounted.

He completed that accounting degree under the tutelage of Harry Finkelman and Concord business instructors at the time. It was a tumultuous time in American history, as the nation entered the Vietnam War, and young men were being drafted for the conflict.

"Everybody was being drafted. They would give you four years' exemption," Frazier said.

Faced with the near-certainty that John would be drafted after completing his college education, he and his college sweetheart, Brenda, married during his senior year of college, and they moved briefly to Kanawha County, where she got a job in the education system and he worked in accounting, until he received his assignment to report to San Antonio, Texas, for Basic Training.

There, he completed Basic Training, and she finished her teaching degree. Ultimately, John served two years in the U.S. Army and was released early to work on a law degree at West Virginia University.

"My record for law school was a very good record, even though most of the kids there were either from a private university or from out of state. I was certainly more than equal in my training at WVU Law School, and I attribute my education at Concord," Frazier said.

He completed his law degree at WVU in 1972 and returned to Princeton, where he practiced law with a local firm before opening his own practice and then being elected to the West Virginia House of Delegates in 1980. At the end of his first year in office, former Gov. Jay Rockefeller appointed Frazier to replace a retiring judge on the Ninth Circuit bench, and he retained that position from 1981 until he retired in 2006.

"I served as a senior status judge for a year, and then went back to the House of Delegates for four years," Frazier said.

He also served as an adjunct professor here at Concord, until the lure of spending their days caring for their then-infant granddaughters, Madison and Amelia, pulled them to Fort Mill, S.C., where they have lived ever since.

The Fraziers still love their southern West Virginia roots and ties to Concord. In fact, even before receiving the invitation to serve as Concord's Homecoming grand marshal, the family was planning to be in the area.

"We're going to be at Pipestem that weekend," Frazier said. "The girls wanted to come up and do a little ziplining and horseback riding."

With Homecoming that weekend, the plans fit seamlessly. He's even asked the granddaughters and Brenda to ride in the parade with him and is delighted that they have all accepted.

"I'm looking forward to coming back," Frazier said. "It's very much a privilege to being selected grand marshal."

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