Capt. Bill Fraley, center, is flanked by his sons, Lt. Mike Fraley of the Carter County Sheriff’s Department, left, and Brian Fraley of the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation.
(John Thompson / Johnson City Press)
Fraley retires from Elizabethton police after 35 years
By John ThompsonElizabethton Bureau Chief
jthompson@johnsoncitypress.com
ELIZABETHTON — Bill Fraley had no plans to spend more than two or three years in the Elizabethton Police Department when he put in a job application more than 35 years ago. His plans changed after he put on the uniform and badge.
City employees hosted a retirement party for him Friday, his last day on the job before retiring. It was also his 66th birthday.
He said he changed his mind about making law enforcement a career after he started working as a patrol officer.
“I like to meet people and I like to help people,” Fraley said. “That is what I have always enjoyed about this job.”
He not only enjoyed helping people, he was good at it. After being hired in 1974, he was promoted to sergeant in 1980 and to captain in 1988. He has served under five chiefs, starting with Bill Toncray, Harry Nave, Tuck Alsup, Roger Deal and Matt Bailey.
He said his proudest accomplishment is that his two sons, Mike and Brian, have followed him into careers in law enforcement even though he never pressured them.
Brian was only a year old when his father became a police officer, so he has never known him in any other role.
“I guess I just looked up to him the way any kid looks up to his dad,” Brian said of the influence his father had on his career choice. Brian is now an agent with the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation. “Overall, dad was more like the Andy Griffith type of law enforcement. He tried to handle things with common sense.”
Mike does remember his father before he became an officer and he clearly remembers the day his dad told him he was going to work for the Elizabethton Police Department.
“He had been laid off from Bemberg (rayon mill) for about eight months,” Mike said. “He had been doing a lot of odd jobs and was actively looking for a job,” Mike said. “One day he came to pick me up from school at East Side Elementary. I was in the second grade. He told me ‘son, I have finally found a job.’ He made me guess what it was and I said fireman and astronaut. He then told me he was going to be a policeman and I thought that was cool.”
Mike joined the Carter County Sheriff’s Department and is now a lieutenant.
The Fraley family’s involvement in law enforcement does not end there. Bill’s wife, Barbara, has worked in security for Walmart and Mike’s wife, Lisa, is an officer with the Tennessee Board of Probation and Parole.
Bill Fraley said it was not always an easy career choice. When he started, the pay was only $440 per month.
“It was tough when you had two kids in school and a wife,” Fraley said. To make ends meet he took odd jobs and sold insurance but he made sure the family had what it needed.
“I remember I always went on all the school trips and things,” MIke said. “I would tell dad I needed such and such amount of money for a trip to Washington or Nashville and he acted like it was no big deal. I always had the money, but now that I look back on it I know that he took a job mowing grass or painting a house to make sure I had the money.”
One of the most difficult days of Bill’s career came when Mike was shot in the line of duty in 1993.
“Mike had just come by the house on his way to work,” Bill Fraley said. “He hadn’t been at work more than 30 minutes when Chief Deal came to the house and told me Mike had been shot. I asked him how bad it was and he told me it was bad.”
Another officer, Rick Taylor, drove him to the hospital. Although Mike had been shot in the chest, he made a remarkable recovery and was back to work in five months.
Although it was a shock, Bill Fraley said “it is such an unpredictable thing when you go out on patrol, you have to be prepared for the worst in a job like this.”
Fraley has never suffered a serious injury in his 35-year career. He said he is thankful that “I have always had the good health to do this job.”
Fraley said the most difficult things about the job are those dealing with families. He ranks domestic violence calls among the most difficult. Others are suicides and delivering messages to families that their teenage son has been killed in a car wreck.
But the job has had so many more rewards for Fraley to offset those difficult moments, he said, and he has made many friends in his long career. Many of those showed up Friday for his retirement party and his fellow officers provided him with a present that will help him feel at home when he is no longer patrolling the streets of Elizabethton. They removed a driver’s seat from a Ford Crown Victoria, made it into a chair and attached a paper box so that he could continue to read the newspaper the same way he did in his cruiser.