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Narrative Summary
Interview with Lynda Frazier by Crystal Wilson
Lynda Frazier was born in Pennsylvania during the 1960’s to an Irish Catholic mother
and a Methodist father. She was raised Catholic, heavily influenced by her grandmother who met
her husband in Ireland and immigrated to the United States. As she grew up, she traveled across
the country before finally settling in a mostly Southern Baptist part of the Ozarks area with her
husband. Her stories growing up, the significant events that changed her outlook on her religion,
and the incidents with former co-workers paints the picture of a strong woman with strong roots
to her past and the culture she was brought up in.
Lynda, when we began the interview, talked about the Irish folk Masses that she grew up
going to with her grandmother, who she stated was the matriarch of the church. The Masses were
fun and interactive and she the church was a small, tight-knit group. The priest was a close
family member who grew up with her maternal grandparents in Ireland, and they would often see
him at the Sunday dinners in her grandmother’s house. Lynda discussed later that after she had
left Pennsylvania, she had never been able to find another folk Mass like her community had,
and that the other types of Masses were almost boring to behold.
She said that her grandmother was the biggest influence in her religion growing up
because she made the religion fun. Her grandmother greatly impacted how they conducted their
holidays and eventually how she raised her children. In the stories that Lynda told about her
grandmother, there was always something that caused her or me to laugh.
At the age of sixteen, Lynda became pregnant with her first son. She said that this heavily
impacted her view of her religion, because she wanted to follow what she was taught and raise
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Spring 2014
Religious Lives of Ozarks Women
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her son to be in the Catholic religion. However, the church that her Catholic school was a part of
refused to baptize her child because it was born out of wedlock. She eventually went back to the
folk church who agreed to baptize her son. When she did this, she noted it was one of her
proudest moments in the religion because she felt she overpowered the religion in a way,
determined to follow what she was taught. The trouble she had to go through in order to be able
to do this changed her outlook on the religion, though, and it influenced how she raised her
children from then on.
After high school, Lynda made sure to get a college education in order to ensure that her
son would have a decent life, and in the process of doing so ended up traveling around the
country, living in California and Texas for a while before moving to the Ozarks area with her
second husband. Her independent, confident spirit helped her be able to be openly Catholic in
places where people in the Catholic community felt they would be looked down upon for being
Catholic.
The Ozarks area that she settled in was mainly Baptist, which caused some complications
with former co-workers trying to convert her. She mentioned that, at least in that area, Baptists
were very religion-oriented. A former supervisor, after hearing that Lynda was Catholic, had
said, “Oh, I’m sorry. We’ll fix that.” Otherwise, though, Lynda made sure to say that there were
not that many problems had with people of other religions in her town.
Lynda believes that Catholic raises strong women, the religion makes women
independent and more grounded. She noted that the Catholic religion says, “You are going to be
the mother, you are going to be the keeper. You are going to be the healer in the home, so you
have to be the strong person.” She explains that the religion really drives home the need to think
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Spring 2014
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things through and make the right choices in life, which has helped her be able to stay away from
most of the bad influences as a teenager.
Missouri State University
Spring 2014
Religious Lives of Ozarks Women