My father-in-law, Wade Frazier, of White Pine, Tennessee, died Jan. 9. He was 81.
At 6-feet-4, Frazier was a tall man with a wide smile, which was his signature feature. He was most comfortable with a gunstock pressed to his shoulder, a gravy biscuit on his breakfast plate or a funny story on his lips.
On the other hand, he didn’t care for neckties, mushrooms or liberals. His gripe against mushrooms was that he wouldn’t eat “anything a frog could p— on.” His gripes against liberals are too numerous to mention.
On my first trip to White Pine to meet Wade back in the mid-1990s, I remember shaking his big, lumberjack-size hand. I’d seen him break 99 target clays out of 100 at a trapshooting range, and I had no doubt that he could scalp me with a shotgun at 100 yards if I ever mistreated his daughter.
His bond with his daughter (my wife, Wetherly) was unbreakable and lasted until his last breath. He told friends she was the best thing that ever happened to him.