BY GLEN MASON
NORFOLK — In a recent column, I saluted to the late Hall of Fame basketball player, coach and humanitarian Bill Russell, the Boston Celtics’ greatest of all time, who inspired me in life and as a sportswriter.
This time I want to write about the life of the late Ed Fraim, who inspired me through his work ethic and mentorship. Fraim is a member of the Hampton Roads African-American Athletic, Old Dominion University and Norfolk Catholic High School halls of fame, and he is remembered for a career as a champion of and chief fundraiser for ODU sports. Ed Fraim died early this month. He was 81.
For those of us fortunate to have know him, he was the perfect example of a big brother to his siblings Tom, Dick and the twins, former Norfolk Mayor Paul Fraim and Kathy Fraim-Price. A sports family.
Coach Fraim was my world history instructor, athletics director and track coach at Norfolk Catholic. He was Old Dominion’s first full time director of development for athletics. He was a near-perfect mentor to me as a student, multi-sport athlete and, later, as a professional.
Curtis Cole a former Virginia Beach resident, played on ODU’s 1975 NCAA Division II basketball team. Like coach Fraim, he is a scion of a basketball family.
“I have had over a 50-year affiliation with a great friend and person in Ed Fraim,” Cole told me recently. “I played against his Norfolk Catholic high school basketball teams in the late 60’s and early 70’s.”
Cole told me athletics was a family affair for the Fraims.
“Tommie was a high school basketball and ACC official, Dickie was a local radio sports broadcaster and executive and Paul … was a standout basketball and football player at Catholic then he played football at VMI,” Cole said.
Cole, a former board member and chair of the ODU Intercollegiate Foundation, worked closely with Ed Fraim.
“Ed was truly dedicated to sports and will be sincerely missed,” he said.
Fraim was ahead of his time.
If Grambling University had the great sports promoter Collie Nicholson, Hampton Roads had Ed Fraim.
He was a sports marketing pioneer.
He was a pioneering coach as well.
“We had to play a different style of basketball against Coach Fraim,” said Lawrence Davis, who played with Cole for Hall of Fame basketball coach John Milbourne at Booker T. Washington High School in Norfolk. “We could not just overpower his teams at Catholic with our big centers and forwards. We had to run special plays on offense and defense to be effective.”
I remember that Coach Fraim would let me spend study hall in the athletic office. He taught me how to properly answer the athletic department phone and research and record sports schedules. Sometimes I’d call the newspaper after basketball games to give them the score.
The most important job he gave me was to be English teacher and golf coach Rick Kiefner’s public relations “student assistant” for the Norfolk Catholic Holiday invitational. It was the harbinger of things to come in my own life, and it is an example of how the people who care about the role of sports in a young life understand that leadership extends to what we do off the field, as well.
That experience in my youth led me to the sports department of The Ledger-Star newspaper as a sports and entertainment writer, and the director of public relations and publicist for sporting events later on in my professional life.
Fraim is the father of sports marketing in Hampton Roads. He made an economic impact in athletics back in the late sixties before the term became part of contemporary vernacular.
“Ed Fraim was so far ahead of his time,” said Wendall Kristofak, a shooting guard opposite Bobby Steven’s point guard position for Fraim’s Crusaders, noting Fraim’s early work organizing sports tournaments.
“As far back as 1968 or 1969, Norfolk Catholic was playing teams from New York City, Chicago, Philadelphia, just to mention a few,” Kristofak told me during a recent conversation about Fraim. “We played 30 to 35 games a year. Every Catholic boy wanted to play for Ed. He was doing things no one else was doing. … He had great organizational skills which he took to ODU. That is why he was so successful at ODU. Ed Fraim loved and cared about people. He touched so many hearts and created so many lasting memories. He was a legend.”
Let me add my voice to those mourning his passing. We’ve lost another great.
The author is a writer and documentary filmmaker who grew up in Norfolk and lived in Virginia Beach for much of his life. He ran a production company, worked in college athletics and was curator at an art gallery in Virginia Beach for years.
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