Fern Alice Frasier

Fern Alice Dodd Frasier passed away at the age of 107, on September 14, 2016, at Regency at the Park in College Place. Fern was born at the John Dodd Touchet Homestead, Touchet, on April 3, 1909, the eighth of nine Dodd children.

In 1912, the older sisters stepped up to raise three-year-old Fern when their mother, Alice Griffith Dodd, passed away. Fern often shared two permanently etched memories from that year; the dramatic reactions in their house to the news of the Titanic and watching the horse drawn wagon carry her mother’s casket down the road.

Fern spent many hours as a teenager cooking for wheat harvest. Often her duties included driving her dad’s Model T to deliver supplies from home to the fields. When crossing the Touchet River resulted in a flat, Fern was proud to report that she had changed that tire all alone.
Fern graduated from Touchet High School in 1927. That same year she married a young Touchet teacher, William (Bill) Frasier. It was the height of Prohibition, and the groom’s aunt climbed into the attic to procure a hidden bottle of homemade dandelion wine to celebrate. They moved immediately to Pullman, where her husband completed his teaching degree. His career took Fern to Payette, Idaho, where she gave birth to two sons, William and Dodd. They also lived in Yakima and Prosser, Wash.
After her boys were in school, Fern was hired by J.C. Penney store as a consultant in women’s fashions. It was a job she enjoyed that complemented a favorite hobby shared with her four sisters, shopping. The sisters found time every year to take a vacation together and visit their favorite big city stores. Fern also loved to go camping at the ocean and in the mountains, especially with her granddaughters.

After retirement, Fern and Bill pulled their travel trailer throughout North America. One of her favorite places was the Grand Canyon. When she was 100, she read about the Grand Canyon Skywalk made of glass and declared, “you’d have to chloroform me to get me out there!”
Fern and Bill wintered in Arizona and summered in the Walla Walla Valley during the seventies and eighties. After Bill passed away in 1999, Fern moved into Quail Run, where she lived quite independently until age 102.

A broken hip confined her to a wheelchair in her new home, but it didn’t stop her from rolling around to make new friends and share laughter.
Fern was preceded in death by all of her siblings; her husband; her son, Dodd; and many nieces and nephews. She is survived by her son, William Frasier of Oroville, Calif.; three granddaughters and their spouses; two great-grandchildren, eight nieces and nephews, and multiple great-nieces and nephews.

She was asked once, “what is the secret to your long life?” Fern’s immediate response was “to keep active and have forgiveness.” The only thing she would do differently, Fern added, would be “to love you all more.”

In lieu of flowers, the family would request that you would stay active, be forgiving and that you would love each other more.
A graveside service will be held at the Touchet Cemetery on October 1, 2016, at 10 a.m.

Arrangements are entrusted to the Herring Groseclose Funeral Home. Guests may sign the guest book.