THE DETROIT JEWISH NEWS
DETROITER.-
Friday, July 13, 1984 25
Frazis is joined at the birthday celebration by his wife, Sadie, seated at right and standing, from left, children Ted, Patricia Rosin Freedman and Walter.
Harry Frazis recalls making
metal matches to bring light into the
house. "Today," he says throwing up
his hands in amazement, "you gess a' •
button."
To most of us switching on alight
is no big deal, but to 100-year-old
Harry Frazis, that is one of the most
important steps of progress made by
mankind in the last century, and in
100 years, he's seen plenty.
"It's been a surprising 100
years," he said last week to relatives
and other residents of the Northwest
Care Center in Detroit, where he and
his second wife, Sadie, reside, at a
special birthday party arranged with
the help of the volunteer service
committee of the Jewish Family
Service. The committee provides
teams to visit Jewish residents in
non-sectarian nursing homes. A total
of 12 teams visit the homes, and their
activities fall under the direction of
Fayga Dombey, volunteer services .
coordinator.
Entertainment was provided by
accordionist Yitzchok Prikupets, 'a
Russian Jew who was resettled here
by the Resettlement Service of the
JFS and who, in gratitude for the JFS
help, accompanies the visiting teams
to the various nursing homes, where
,
•
BY HEIDI PRESS
*Local News Editor
he provides musical entertainment
In addition to the JFS-spnsored
gathering, Frazis also was treated to
gratis.
a family party Saturday night at
Frazis' surviving children, Ted
of Oak Park, falter of Farmington
Southfield Charley's, where more
Hills andPatricia Rosin Freedman of
than 100' relatives from the Detroit
LaBelle, Fla.,joined their faher at his
area, Montreal,' California, Florida,
table as Yiddish and Hebrew songs , New Jersey and New York were on
were sung in tribute to the centena-
hand to pay tribute to him. The JFS
rian.
„ also planted trees in honor of the oc-
Another daughter, Bess Portney
casion.
Schenbrun, died in 1975. Frazis has
Asked which technological
11 grandchildren and 12 great-
breakthrough had the greatest im-
grandchildren:
pact on him, Frazis was undecided.
•
"What can you say. The way it was
100 years ago, the young people will
never understand it."
Son Ted recalls that a favorite
pastime of his father's is to quote the
Bible, and the senior Frazis, who still
reads Hebrew, carries with him a
pocket edition of the Chumash.
Born Lazar Hirsch Frizus, the
senior Frazis studied Hebrew at an
early age in his native Lithuania.
Things in Russia were not good for
Jews, and Frazii flect, to Germany,
then to the U.S.
Settling in New York, Frazis
took up ironworking, in a way, fol-
lowing in the footsteps of his
blacksmith father. He married his
° first wife, Yetta, but the two found
life in New York's Lower, East Side
restrictive. They yearned for land.
Moving to Mingbsota, Frazis
came a peddler, burstill he was not
happy. He learned from a landsman
that a Jewish farm colony was in
formation in Edenbridge, Sas-
katchewan. Unimpressed by what he
saw, he nonetheless wrote descrip-
tive letters to Yetta, who was all for
the move.
He was unsuccessful at his first
farming attempt, and workgd on the
Continued on Page 27