JUST AS SWEET SECOND TIME
Happy heading to inauguration
A lot has changed since the Frazier family of Marquette Park joined 2 million people who flooded the National Mall four years ago, determined to bear witness to the inauguration of America’s first black president.
The changes aren’t limited to accomplishments that Frazier family matriarch Pamela Frazier ticks off for that president: the Nobel Peace Prize; passing a $787 billion stimulus package; saving the U.S. auto industry; ending the war in Iraq; killing Osama bin Laden, and passing a historic health care reform bill.
They’re also reflected in the life’s ebb and flow for an urban family, whose hopes of the American Dream were raised by the election of Barack Obama.
Retirement, college.
Murder, pregnancy. All in four years. “God is in control,” says Frazier, whom you won’t get to utter one Obama criticism.
“I just really believe in my president, and I believe in his vision,” she says.
Chicago Sun-Times readers first met the divorced, middle-class mother of five, a grandmother and greatgrandmother, in our 2009 “Road Trip to History” series.
Now 62, Frazier has since retired from her job of 21 years as an addictions counselor at the Women’s Treatment Center, 140 N. Ashland. She decided it was time to focus on her own business — N’The Spirit Transformational Living Center — a women’s recovery home in Englewood that she’s
job
graduations,
loss,
teen run for the past 10 years.
“I wanted to spend time on my own vision,” says Frazier, a two-flat homeowner.
“I opted not to draw down Social Security, so right now I have no insurance,” she says. “But I stepped out on faith and the promise of Obama’s health care act.”
Pamela Frazier saved up $5,000 four years ago to take eight members of her brood on that historic road trip. And she isn’t missing Obama’s second inauguration.
Frazier will again join one of the many bus charters traveling in caravans from Chicago to D.C. for the Monday event. This time, the family is traveling with the “Women for Obama Presidential Inauguration Trip,” led by event planner W&A Entertainment.
And Frazier is traveling with just four family members — all grandchildren.
“The day he won, I knew I was going back,” Frazier says. “I try to take my grandkids places they’ll learn things. For instance, we went to Memphis for the 40th anniversary of Dr. King’s assassination, and they marched with Al Sharpton.”
The Fraziers’ bus was scheduled to leave at 9 a.m. Saturday and return at 2 a.m. on Tuesday.
Within the past four years, Frazier’s family suffered the murder of 18-year-old grandson Michael Frazier III, who was 16 when he attended the inauguration on Jan. 20, 2009.
Michael III was shot and killed on Nov. 3, 2010, walking in the Grand Boulevard neighborhood with his younger brother, Mylon, and two other youths.
His murder remains an unsolved case with Chicago Police.
“Michael was my road dog. They lived upstairs. Every Saturday when I went out, I’d snatch Mikey to go with me. He’d carry my purse, bag, whatever,” Pamela says.
“They said the shooter was after one of the youth Mikey was with. They never found him, and they never will, because everyday it’s five new killings. Police don’t have time to look for all the killers out here. It’s so bad. It’s sad.”
Frazier
Pamela Frazier’s granddaughter, Ryaan Frazier, who attended the first inauguration at age 17, is now a young mother of 21. Her 18-monthold is the first great-grandchild.
Ryaan Frazier is looking for work in an economy offering scarce job opportunities for the so-called millennial generation ages 18-29, and won’t be attending this time.
Pamela Frazier’s own mother, Margie Edwards, 82, in 2009 told the Sun-Times that Obama’s election was a dream she never thought she’d see realized. She’d fervently wished she could attend the inauguration but couldn’t take the walking.
Edwards underwent cancer surgery last week and remains hospitalized. Pamela Frazier says she knows her mother will be unable to continue living alone in the house she’s rented in Englewood for 22 years, and “we’ll have to figure out what’s next.”
Another family member Sun-Times readers met in 2009, Michael Frazier Jr. — Michael III’s father — couldn’t afford to take time off from his Museum of Science & Industry job to join his family four years ago, but he was so proud his two sons would see a president sworn in that looks like them.
He has since lost his job to downsizing. His two years of federal extended unemployment benefits ended just be- fore Christmas. He continues pounding the pavement for employment, amidst an 8.7 percent unemployment rate in Illinois.
‘Still have that same feeling’
After Michael III’s killing, his parents eventually separated. Michael III’s mother moved her other son, Mylon, to Roselle, far from the inner city. Mylon was 13 when we first met him. He recently started classes at Harper College in Palatine, and can’t go this time.
Three of his cousins who went the first time are going — Asia Wright, 15, and her brother, Bryan Jackson, 12; also, 12-year-old Semaja Frazier, Ryaan’s sister.
Unable to attend are the children’s mothers, Marquita Wright, 32, and Lataunya Frazier, 42, who accompanied them the first time.
It will be the first inauguration for a fourth grandchild, McKinley Wright IV, 14, of St. Paul, Minn., who flew in to Chicago Friday to make the trip.
And one final family member will attend — Pamela Frazier’s son, Marquis Wright, 32, whom we also met in 2009, is flying in. Four years ago, when the Southwest Airlines flight attendant flew into D.C. with friends, finding his family in the crowds was a hopeless proposition. Neither he nor Pamela Frazier expects it will be any less so.
“I’m just so excited,” Pamela Frazier says, as she packed hand warmers in remembrance of 2009’s bitter cold. “I was looking at our scrapbook and the picture of me crying when he was taking the oath. I still have that same feeling, that he’s moving us forward. And it falling on the Martin Luther King holiday? That’s a God thing.”
The grandkids were sleepy as the Frazier family arrived early Saturday at Christ Universal Temple at 119th Street and Loomis.
Two buses, and vendors hawking $5 commemorative T-shirts from the trunk of a car, awaited the Fraziers and others in the group headed for Washington for President Barack Obama’s second inauguration.
They numbered nearly 100 in all after a stop in Merrillville, Ind. Claudia Bolton, 54, of Washington Heights, asked her fellow passengers to join in a prayer, asking blessings for the travelers, their journey and the president.
McKinley Wright, 14, was excited. “I’m looking forward to getting to see the president and his wife,” he said. “They’re making history. I’m making it, too, ’cause I’m going. I can’t wait to tell all my friends back home about it.”
This will be McKinley’s first presidential inauguration. His cousins, also part of the group, were there for the first one, too. And what did they remember most?
“His chant, while he was saying his speech, ‘Yes, we can!’ “said Semaja Frazier, 12, who aspires to be a dancer. “All of us would say it, too, and it felt like everybody was united.”
Brian Jackson, also 12, who wants to be a choir director, said he remembers this of 2009: “I felt happy getting to watch him speak and say how he can make the world a better place.”
His sister, Asia Wright, 15, said what still stands out for her was the feeling she got that she could do anything. “It changed me,” said Asia, who wants to be a doctor. “I knew he had gone through a lot of struggles to get where he was. He went up against a lot of good people who could have won, and he never gave up on his dreams. So why should I?”