Richard Allen Frye ’55

Richard was born April 10, 1933, in Utica, N.Y. He died suddenly March 8, 2019, in Baptist Hospital in Pensacola, Fla. He was 85.

Born in Whitesboro, N.Y., he graduated in 1951 from Whitesboro High School, where he starred in football, basketball, baseball, and track. Both he and his father, Allen Frye, were elected to the Greater Utica Sports Hall of Fame. He earned a degree at Princeton, where he played football and basketball and earned mention in Sports Illustrated in 1953.

After graduating second in his class at Albany Law School in 1958, he practiced law in Utica for 60 years until his death, highlighted by a successful defense at the United States Supreme Court in the case of United Haulers v. Oneida-Herkimer County Waste Management.

Richard was president of the Oneida County Bar Association in 1993 and was awarded the Hugh R. Jones Award from the Oneida County Bar Association in 2006 for outstanding service to the profession and the community.

He was active in Plymouth Bethesda Church, was a founding member of the Optimists Club of Whitesboro, and was a member of the Yahnundasis and the Fort Schuyler clubs.

He loved a good joke, Italian opera, chamber music, museums, skiing, golf, and, through thick and thin — mostly thin — the New York Giants.

Richard died on the last day of his two-month vacation in Gulf Shores, Ala., where many friends and family visited him. He is survived by his wife of 63 years, Betty Lou; children Julie McDowell, Mark Frye, Sheila Frye, Tim Frye, and Eric Frye; 10 grandchildren; and one great-grandchild.