Wednesday, December 1, 2010

Believing in the Importance of Education and Libraries, Part 2


Link to November 30 Philadelphia Inquirer article, "Merck's new CEO has Philly roots".

Excerpt: Frazier's success is all the more notable given his starting point, North Philadelphia, one of Philadelphia's most impoverished neighborhoods.

"Yes, by the accident of geography, my father's house was at 18th and Diamond Streets," Frazier said in an interview today. "But the standards of my father's house were universal in that he believed in hard work and the importance of education."

His father, Otis Frazier, was the self-taught son of a South Carolina sharecropper. Now deceased, he required his children to walk about a mile and a half twice a month to a branch library - to return books they had read, and bring home new ones
.  [Emphasis added.]