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JACKSON NEIGHBORS: Frady’s ‘fine as frogs’ hair’ after years of work
To say Alvin Frady is happy this week is an understatement.
“I’m fine as frogs’ hair,” Frady said Monday (Oct. 24). “I just couldn’t be happier.”
Alvin Frady kneels next to the newly-installed monument marking the Jackson County Home Cemetery.
Frady was so happy he threw a party on Sunday. It wasn’t your usual party – it was in a cemetery. Hearing Frady talk about it is like listening to a child who just got a new bike for Christmas. He hardly takes a breath as he tells about the day he has been looking forward to for years.
“We had a big crowd. Several commissioners were here, and there were some (Jackson County Cemetery) Board and (Jackson County Cemetery) Society members. The day was beautiful and we had quite a few that turned out. It turned out real good,” Frady said.
Frady and a handful of other Jackson County residents had the celebration to mark a sort-of rededication of the Jackson County Home Cemetery, located on a hill behind the N.C. Department of Transportation’s Division 14 headquarters in Sylva.
Someone in Frady’s family has been working on preserving the cemetery for almost two decades. For the last few years Alvin himself has spearheaded the movement.
“This has been very important to my family. We have a lot of relatives who were buried in this cemetery,” Frady said.
Through all the work, it’s been a slow process, which is what made Frady decide the party was warranted.
“Over the past two years everything came together very well,” Frady said.
In that time Frady has done just about everything he can to help the cemetery – from divining for graves to building trails and crosses to mark burial sites to serving as a leader in both the Cemetery Society and Board. He also designed the new monument that now marks the cemetery. Plus, he’s preached his sermon of respect for the dead at county commissioners’ meetings and in every media outlet between here and Raleigh. Next month he’ll be featured in Our State magazine.
While anyone associated with the efforts to preserve the cemetery knows it’s been Frady’s “baby,” as he sometimes calls it, he refuses to hog the attention.
“I don’t take all the credit, this was definitely a team effort. We’ve had a lot of people from the Cemetery Society and the Cemetery Board who have done a lot of good work out here,” Frady said.
He points to folks like Ronnie Melton, who is co-chairman of the Cemetery Society, as the ones who have done “the real work.” Melton sees it differently, though.
“Alvin’s done an excellent job out here,” Melton said.
For his part, Alvin Frady is proud of what’s been accomplished. What means more than monuments or newspaper articles is what those whose eternal resting place he has rehabilitated would think.
“My family and our friends are satisfied. They’re smiling down on all of us,” Frady said. “One rose is worth more to the dead than a million are to the living.”
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