Now that's growth!

Growing Like Frazee

Flower Family Sprouts New Bulb

By John Burrus

Blade-Tribune Staff Writer

Oceanside-Edwin Frazee recently paid an $8 fine to the Oceanside Rotary Club. The club raises funds for charity by fining members for everything from the ridiculous to the sublime.

Frazee was fined one dollar per pound for the fourth generation of the famous flower family. Little David weighed in at Oceanside Hospital July 20 and ounce under eight pounds, but Rotarians don’t make change easily.

Facts about the youth’s arrival are scarce. When the Blade-Tribune called, the youth’s mother had the fourth generation in the sink giving him a bath and was a little reluctant to carry on a long conversation.

In Oceanside, the expression “Growed like Topsy,” could be changed to “Grew like Frazees.” It would be better grammatically and just as appropriate.

The fourth generation of flower growers – his grandfather refers to the diaper-clad youth as the “irrigator” – is the first son and second child of Mr. and Mrs.

The original bulb of the famous bulb-growing family was Doniphan Frazee, who served as the first city clerk in Oceanside. The present patriarch of the clan is Frank Frazee, 72, who was born in a home where the South Oceanside School is now located.

His four sons are all associated with Frazee Flowers. In addition to Edwin, there is Ernest, 45, and Elmer, 43. Growing tired of names that began with E, the Frazees named the son born seven years later, Robert.

Edwin recalls the elder Frazee and his three sons were planting bulbs in south Oceanside the day Robert was born. It was 1928 – also the year Frazee Flowers started to grow.

The growth of the firm has been steady and continued “from the time we started,” Edwin Frazee told the Blade-Tribune, “we have grown about 20 percent each year.  That means we double in size every five years.”

Many Additions

The equation gets quite large when carried to the seventh power. In 1958, Frazee Flowers moved to a warehouse on Oceanside Boulevard “big enough to handle any conceivable growth.”

In 1960, the firm added a 6,000-sq-foot building where cut flowers are now processed. That fall, another 5,600-sq-foot addition provided facilities for drying the 10,000 named and numbered varieties of gladiolas handled by the firm each year. In 1962, a 12,000-sq-foot cooler and a maintenance shop were added.  Now the firm and its financial mother, the Bank of America, need a new 15,000-square-foot building to move the processing of cut flowers out to make room to process bulbs so they can be planted to grow more flowers to process.

The endless chain of flower production, according to Edwin Frazee, goes on 26 hours a day, 9 days a week. In the area between Camp Pendleton and Green Valley extending three miles inland it’s possible to grow gladioli blooms the year round. Bulbs maybe grown farther inland where the sun sears the blossoms but doesn’t stunt the growth of the bulbs.

Frazees grow well in the same climate. Edwin has three boys and a girl. They are John, 22, Jim, 18, Harley, 13, and Doris Lee, 21.

Elmer has a boy and two girls – Doniphan Blair, 16, Shelley, 14, and Terry, 11. Ernest has a couple of step daughters, Joan and Betty. Robert has two girls, Susan 9, and Nancy, 2.

The four brothers have an older sister, Mrs. Marjorie Meikle, who lives in the San Francisco Bay area. She has two boys, Frank and Jim. There are 16 direct descendants of Frank Frazee living in the area.

Here’s a tip to the Oceanside Rotary Club president, who has been known to fine members when the get their name in the paper. Newspaper advertising is paid for by the column inch – perhaps Edwin might rather pay that way or at $1 a head for the Frazee descendants.