by 
peacefully passed away at home in San Manuel on July 24, 2015. Rosalie, known to her friends and family as Rosie, was born on Sept. 8,1945 in Dillon, Montana to Sarah and George Graham. She attended beauty school after high school and loved doing hair and being a beautician. In 1964, she married Glen Russel Frazier; their marriage would last 40 years. Rosie put her career on hold to raise a family of five children. Although she never went back to work as a beautician, her passion never faded and is apparent in her daughters’ grade school pictures with Beehives and home perms.
In 1973, Rosie and family moved to San Manuel, a company mining town built in 1953 for the employees at Magma copper company. In order to work at Magma, her daughter Debbie remembered her mom putting heavy copper nuggets in her pockets her Dad had brought home to make the required minimum weight at the mine. Over the years she held several different jobs at Magma; her favorite and last position at the company was a tinsmith.
One of her favorite treasured possessions was a vintage wardrobe steamer trunk that her sister Hazel had restored and hand painted beautiful pink roses on. Inside hanging on perfectly preserved wooden hangers were two long sleeve faded blue denim shirts that had the words, “sisters are forever” embroidered in red with white lace on the collars and two black and white pictures on the pockets. One picture of Rosie and Hazel as children and the other picture of Rosie and Hazel grown up. Just looking at those pictures you can hear the two sisters giggling. All Debbie’s memories of the two of them together, are of them laughing and giggle at everything.
I can DO that…..I can MAKE that….are words that Rosie’s kids say often because of their mom. She possessed the ability to look at knotted up pieces of driftwood lying on a rocky beach on the coast of Oregon and see beautiful end tables.
One winter she had the creative vision and green thumb to look outside her window on 4th Ave. in San Manuel at her desert dry and bare backyard and see a vegetable garden. That spring the family were eating lettuce and tomato salads with little green inch worms. Rosie’s words: “He won’t eat much, just pick him off, it’s not going to hurt you.” To their surprise, Rosie’s kids didn’t die from eating little green inch worms that summer and they all gained an appreciation for the outdoors and gardening.
Rosie loved taking their old Ford pickup truck with the over the cab sleeper camper camping to the Gila River. Daughter Debbie remembers jumping into the brownish green river without an inner tube, her mom yelling from the shallow part of the river bank where she could sit in the water, “You better swim cuz I can’t swim to save you!” The kids’ heads were barely visible as they bobbed down the fast current, laughing when they got caught in the rivers strong whirlpools that would spin them around and pull them under. Thanks to Rosie during those hot summers they all became strong confident swimmers and most importantly learned not to panic in water or in life. “Just go with the flow and don’t worry about the whirlpools.”
If you knew Rosie, you knew she loved rocks! In every room of her house she had displayed beautiful precious rocks, some she just picked up walking and others she had collected from years of going to the Gem and Mineral Show and traveling to her favorite places.
“Snoopy rock”, the “cooking rock”, “lava rock with a face”, “Christmas rock”…..her children, grandchildren, great grandchildren and generations to come without a doubt will have sentimental attachments to what most people think are ordinary rocks. But because of Rosie, those ordinary rocks had names and to this day the family lugs them from house to house and still asks each other about them.
Rosie loved deeply and one of the ways she showed you she loved you was by making you a quilt. If you were blessed with receiving one of her handcrafted masterpieces it was her way of saying to you, “I love you, I thought of you with every stitch I sewed. I thought about the moments we spent together and cherish them all.”
Rosie was preceded in death by her sister, Hazel; brother, Charlie; and her oldest son, David. She is survived by her brother, Tommy of Dillon, Montana; children, Danny (New Hampshire), Debbie (California), Tammy (Arizona) and Tony (Arizona); 11 grandchildren, Michael Horne (36), Frances (32), Tiffany (28), Ryan (28), Michael (27), Chris (25), Chris “Bubba” (23), Mark (21), Shane Glen (18), Peyton Eli (6) and Teagan Kane (6); and four great-grandchildren, Sanaira (3), Spencer (2), Vera (16 months) and Samara (2 months).
There are news or informational items frequently written by staff or submitted to the Copper Basin News, San Manuel Miner, Superior Sun, Pinal Nugget or Oracle Towne Crier for inclusion in our print or digital products. These items are not credited with an author.
by by