Alexander Fraser

Alexander Varennes Fraser, named after the first Commandant of the US Coast Guard, was born on January 25, 1959 in Princeton, New Jersey to Eleanor Phillips Fraser and Russell Alfred Fraser. He was pleased to share a birthday with Robert Burns, the famed Scottish poet, in keeping with the Scottish strain in his family. His death occurred suddenly 3 days before Christmas, on the first full day of winter, December 22, 2018. Alexander grew up in Princeton and moved to Nashville with his family, followed by a move to Ann Arbor, Michigan in 1967 where he attended middle and high school. He then graduated from Middlebury College in Middlebury, Vermont, studying Italian, cementing the Italian he learned during the year that he and his parents spent in Rome when he was in high school. He received a Master's Degree, and later a Fulbright Scholarship to start a library in Nicaragua. It was there that he met his future wife Sylvia and her family. After their return to Chicago, his post-graduate work in library sciences further enhanced his career and his education, and he became a Doctor of Library Science. He retired from the Chicago Public Library in 2018. Proficient in Spanish, Italian and French, Alexander was pleased recently to find his DNA confirmed Italian ancestry, as well as Jewish and Moroccan roots. He loved travel and learning, possessing a real curiosity of spirit, but his was not only a life of the mind. In his early life he played baseball and ran cross country, before being hit with juvenile arthritis which plagued him the rest of his life. Despite that, he was a talented guitar player, pleasing many with his performances and his compositions. He was a warm and giving person, a good friend to many, and he will be sorely missed, by his friends in Chicago and his extended family and friends in Nicaragua and throughout the world. He leaves behind his loving wife Sylvia; their beautiful daughter Natalie; his older sister Karen (Venice, FL); his mother-in-law Piola (Chicago); his father's widow Mary Zwiep (Honolulu, HI); step children Aniel Courtin de Torsay (France), Juan Ramon Morales and Ryan Alexander Morales (both of Chicago); 4 grandchildren; and numerous nieces and nephews. "Now cracks a noble heart. Good night sweet prince, and flights of angels sing thee to thy rest." Visitation Sunday from 3:00 p.m. until 8:00 p.m. at Cumberland Chapels 8300 W. Lawrence Ave., Norridge, IL. Funeral services will begin at 9:30 a.m. on Monday at the funeral home, and will then proceed to St. Priscilla Church for Mass at 10:30 a.m. Interment will be private. Info 708-456-8300