Joe and Margaret — By Tommy Purser

Joe and Margaret Frazier were two of my favorite people, for a number of reasons, not the least of which was the fact they were such genuinely nice people. Humble and elegant. Genuinely appreciative of the communities in which they accumulated their wealth and the church family who adored them and whom they adored.
Margaret Frazier was a staunch believer in the value an active, vibrant library could mean to a community. When the two of them passed away, they gave this community a huge portion of the wealth they had accumulated in hopes it would make the communities they so loved better. They gifted Hazlehurst First Methodist Church with funds to erect a beautiful youth center, money to provide scholarship funds as a catalyst to providing better lives for people in Jeff Davis and Appling counties, and funds to build a beautiful library in Hazlehurst, realizing what literacy could mean for the county they so loved.
Their generosity has been generating huge dividends and is continuing to provide our community with life-improvements.
If you haven’t met Matthew Stembridge, the new directory of the Frazier-endowed Jeff Davis Library, you’ve missed a treat. The library has been a tremendous asset for our community and the people who have worked to make it successful are owed our deep gratitude. And Mr. Stembridge has elevated the Fraziers’ dreams to yet another level.
Mr. Stembridge submitted to us a number of photographs depicting the unprecedented success if this year’s Jeff Davis Library Summer Reading Program.
We here at the Ledger have fallen on hard times and, due to the negative impact social media has had on our ability to adequately serve the community we so love, we had room for only one photo that expressed the library’s successful summer reading program. There were more photos provided to us but, having lost so much advertising revenue to social media, we have been stripped of our ability to adequately report our communitiy’s news as we have in the past.
I had so hoped that I could have adequately applauded the impact the library’s Summer Reading program had for our county’s young people. And given appropriately thankful recognition to the generosity of two of my favorite people.
I like to thing that Mr. Joe and Mrs. Margaret are looking down with exuberant happiness at what their gifts have done for the community they so loved.
I, for one, am so appreciative of who they were, and what they’ve done for my church, my county and the citizens both the Fraziers and I so love.