Itās āstop the pressesā for WCUās longtime print shop director
It seems the stars were aligned for Tom Frazier to live a life of paper and ink, of milestones and memories, of students and their dreams. Even he will acknowledge the ease with which new doors opened as others closed, always leading him to places that seemed to need him most.
But four decades in the printing business is a long time, and Frazier is ready to call it a night. On Dec. 31 heāll retire after 25 years at Ģš¹ĻŹÓʵapp, all of those as director of printing and mailing services, where, among thousands of other things, he has ensured graduation programs were worthy of their recipients, prospective students were wowed by their WCU printed materials and university departments could send and receive their mail no matter what.
āI still enjoy the work and the profession Iām in, but after over 42 years total being in this business, Iām ready not to be called āboss.ā Years of making decisions for and about my employees has taken a toll,ā Frazier said. āThe COVID-19 environment has made work a lot more difficult. Itās put a strain on what we do and the way we do our jobs.ā
Frazier, who graduated from WCU in 1979 with a degree in instructional technology, is WCUās Alumni Spotlight for December, an honor he shares with Bill Studenc, chief communications officer and director of the Office of Communications and Public Relations, who also is retiring this month, after 32 years.
Frazier, 64, grew up in Claremont and discovered journalism when his schoolās new computer system accidently put a high school freshman ā Frazier ā in a senior journalism class. The teacher, a newbie, told him he could stay if he didnāt give her any trouble. Frazier agreed.
A week later, she handed him a Polaroid camera and told him to figure out how to use it. He did and began taking photos for the school newspaper and yearbook, which led to a remarkable opportunity for a high school student. āThey had an exchange program in Catawba County,ā he said. āOne day a month, they would let you out of school and you could spend the day with one of three daily newspapers ā the Newton Observer, the Hickory Daily Record or The Charlotte Observer. They let you know two days ahead of time which area of a paper you would visit.ā Turns out Frazier was sent to spend a day with Doug Marlette, an editorial cartoonist with the Charlotte Observer at the time, who eventually won a Pulitzer Prize for his work with the Atlanta Journal Constitution.
āAs they say, once you get ink under your nails it never leaves,ā he said. āI wound up editing the school paper and working for the Newton Observer and Hickory Daily Record in high school. It became part of my DNA.ā
Yes, it did, dictating his life from then on out. In the fall of 1978, Frazierās last semester at WCU, his instructional technology degree took him to the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indiansā schools to student teach, which, after he graduated that December, led to a full-time job running the high school print shop and teaching because the current manager just happened to leave to open a new business. The tribe was investing in the most modern printing equipment in the South, Frazier said, which opened new business opportunities for him and the tribe. But when the North American Free Trade Agreement was enacted in the early 1990s, the commercial printing business all but dried up, he said, with most of it going overseas.
By then, Frazier had made a name for himself around the Southeast as the go-to guy for the latest in new printing technologies, and the Asheville Citizen-Times needed him. After 12 years with the tribe, Frazier left to help the paper, and its owner, Multimedia, convert from the ācold type to the electronic methodā of printing papers, he said. āI was over production of what they called the downtown production office. It was my job from the time an ad was sold or the article was written, up until it hit the press, to take care of it,ā he said. āI also worked with their 16 other papers to help them make the same conversion.ā He was based in Asheville but traveled throughout the Southeast helping the companyās newspapers convert to the new method.
Five years later, the Gannett corporation bought Multimedia, and Frazier was told he would lose his job. While he despaired about telling his wife because he had no back-up plan, the celestial summit was already in motion and had made its move by the time he got home that night and shared his news.
āSheās sitting there reading The Sylva Herald and says, āWell, the guy who runs the print shop at Western, Sam Beck, is retiring,āā Frazier said. āI knew Sam from my time as a student at Western and from my time running the print shop in Cherokee, because Western was a customer of ours. So, the very next morning I went to see Sam and told him I heard he was retiring. He said, āWhy would you want to come back here and do this?ā I said, āIāve got a family to feed, and I need a job.āā
āIt was the perfect match,ā he said. āIt was meant to be.ā
And so many others would agree. News of his impending retirement had WCU administrators and staff reminiscing about Frazier and all the good he has done for the university. Mike Langford, director of undergraduate admissions, said working with Frazier was like working with Santa. āMany times I go with my wish list of items to Tom. He goes into his āworkshopā and then I come back to work, and itās like Christmas morning ā my wish list has turned into a beautiful product or gift,ā Langford said. āIāve worked with many printers in my years in higher education, most commercial. WCU has been lucky to have someone of Tomās knowledge and work ethic in this role, and much of the success of our admissions events is due in part to Tom.ā
āTom Frazier is a Catamount to his core,ā said Chief of Staff Melissa Wargo. āIāve met few people who are as enthusiastic and passionate about this university. He doesnāt see the Print Shop and Print Services as supplemental to the mission of WCU; rather he sees them as a fully realized microcosm of all WCU stands for ā education of our students and service to our communities. Hundreds of student workers had the good fortune to fall under Tomās wing. He was their mentor, a proxy parent, a boss and, yes, a teacher. Tom is a good man.ā
Jim Buchanan, editor of The Sylva Herald, worked with Frazier at the Asheville Citizen-Times, where he earned the nickname āTom Terrificā for his ability to untangle difficult tasks with āhumor and aplomb.ā āHe has also earned the respect of a generation of WCU students and staff with his work at WCU, many of whom I've known over the years, and is universally admired for his work ethic and calm demeanor,ā said Buchanan, a 1983 alumnus of WCU.
But the one compliment that may hit closest to Frazierās Catamount heart is from Chad Gerrety, associate athletic director-external affairs, who said Frazier has always gone above and beyond the call of duty to support the universityās student-athletes and their coaches whenever a Catamount team would win a Southern Conference championship.
āThe tradition, thanks to Tom, is to print a SoCon championship banner for the team, which often times includes a photo of the Catamounts celebrating the championship,ā Gerrety said. āThese are almost always a super quick turnaround. That Saturday or Sunday late afternoon, as soon as he would learn that we had won a championship, he would go into the office, design and print the banner, then install it on Catamount Gap for the team to see as they arrived back in Cullowhee hours after the victory. You can imagine the excitement of the team as they see the banner coming back into town, surely a memory the student-athletes, coaches and staff remember for a lifetime.ā
And a tradition Frazier said he hopes others will continue when heās gone. He credits his wife Vickey, whom he met at WCU when both were first-generation college students, and his two sons, Patrick and Jarrett, now grown, with helping hang the banners no matter the time of night.
It should be said that Frazier has been more than āan ink and paper guyā for WCU. He has been a keeper of sorts, of its studentsā memories and milestones, and of its reputation through its printed materials. āWe tell ourselves in our shop that what we do has to look better than what anybody else in the 16 state schools is doing, for somebody to think about coming to Western,ā he said. āWe do the best we can with the tools weāve got and weāve been very blessed that the university has supported us and allowed us to have some top-notch equipment and resources. And, I have a great group of people I work with who produce this stuff.ā
Frazier credits WCUās location in Western North Carolina with helping the print shop acquire its impressive heavy duty digital equipment that gives it its extensive printing capabilities. āItās because of our geography that weāre the size that we are,ā he said. āBecause often, if we canāt do it, it canāt be done locally, sometimes even regionally.ā
So, what will Frazier miss most? āWhen you talk about things Iāll miss, it will be things like reinventing that graduation program to make it have more life, to make it more inclusive so that now it may be something thatās laid out on the coffee table or something mom and grandmom will hang on to because it tells the story of the institution their loved ones have just graduated from,ā he said.
āItās a combination of being a part of the lives of the students who work with us, seeing them come in, go through, graduate. Weāve had students who met at our shop, who didnāt know each other, that have gotten married and had kids, so weāre like the godparents of those children. We continue to enjoy following these young people as they have gone on to be successful. And honestly, thatās what itās all about, thatās what the bottom line is. Weāre here to make a difference in their lives.ā
