West Newsmagazine 1-9-19

36 I COVER STORY I
January 9, 2019
WEST NEWSMAGAZINE
@WESTNEWSMAG
WESTNEWSMAGAZINE.COM
Life on The Hill
One family’s legacy, one woman’s
commitment to Westland Acres
By JESSICA MESZAROS
Whether she’s taking a seat in the front
pew during a sermon or dynamically
stringing together the notes of a gospel
song, Doris A. Frazier is one of the most
familiar faces at Union Baptist Church in
Westland Acres.
Seated at a Steinway & Sons grand piano
in the rear of the church, Doris simultaneously
plays music and gives hugs and
smiles to friends and family as they gather.
When the time for the sermon comes,
she moves from the piano to the front pew.
When the church’s choir stands to sing,
Doris joins them, using her experience as
a gospel singer and music educator to lead
the congregation in song.
Back in the day, Doris toured the U.S.,
performing as a gospel singer. She also
performed on a local television show,
taught piano and spearheaded multiple
efforts to save the Westland Acres community
in West St. Louis County, where she
raised her six children with her late husband,
Clifford.
Located between the municipalities of
Chesterfield and Wildwood, Westland
Acres is a historically African American
community that was founded by William
West, a freedman who, alongside the likes
of Daniel Boone, was one of the area’s first
settlers. Formerly enslaved by the Long
family, West amassed enough money to
purchase roughly 133 acres of land, for
about $6 an acre, from Long in 1867.
Today, Westland Acres remains tucked
off of Church Road in the northeast area of
Wildwood near Chesterfield on land known
as “The Hill” due to its perched position
atop a tall, tree-covered hill. At its center is
Union Baptist Church.
Upon West’s death, the property was
divided among his seven children and has
since been divided among further generations,
including the Frazier family, who
currently owns about 90 acres. Clifford
was one of West’s great-grandsons.
From spearheading efforts to preserve
the history of Westland Acres to leading her
church’s choir on Sunday mornings to singing
at weddings and funerals, the 87-yearold
is showing no signs of slowing down.
“Whatever comes next,” Doris said.
“That’s what I always say.”
Family and Faith
Doris was one of 12 children born to
James Fiddmont and Lucy Barnett Fiddmont.
The couple moved to the
St. Louis area from Arkansas
in 1926. They bought a house in
the Maplewood area and, for 32
years, James served as a minister
at the Mt. Zion Baptist Church in
Richmond Heights. Four of Doris’
brothers also became ministers.
From an early age, faith and music
became intertwined in Doris’ life. She
began taking piano lessons at age 9 and
was playing piano regularly at the Old
Community Baptist Church in Webster
Groves by her early teens.
“I’ve been playing for churches since
I was 15 and I’m still playing!” Doris
exclaimed.
She attended Lincoln School in the
Richmond Heights School District before
graduating from Douglass High in Webster
Groves. One of her friends, Helen Johnson,
also graduated from Douglass High.
Today, the two women attend Union Baptist
Church together. They even served as
bridesmaids at each other’s weddings.
“We were very close,” Johnson said. “We
did everything together. I got married, and
we were still close.”
During her high school years
also is when Doris met Clifford.
At that time, Lincoln University in
Jefferson City was a destination for
high school track and choir events.
Clifford drove his younger sisters,
who went to school with Doris, to
those events, which ultimately led
to Doris meeting Clifford.
Doris had worked with musical
director Kenneth Billups to learn
“Pace, Pace Mio Dio” in Italian
for a music contest at Berea Presbyterian
Church. Clifford ended
up taking her to the event due to a
streetcar strike.
“I started dating Cliff, and I would come
out here [to Westland Acres] to help out
with the music,” Doris said. “I always
loved music.” She majored in it at Lincoln
University.
In 1950, Doris and Cliff were married.
“I told him I wouldn’t move out here
unless he built me a house,” Doris said.
“So he built me a house.”
She described moving from Maplewood
to the more rural Westland Acres community
as “night and day.”
“The only thing we had was electricity,”
Doris said. “We didn’t have anything else,
in the form of gas or water. It wasn’t really
Doris Frazier at the piano in Union Baptist Church
that far, but it seemed like it was because,
back then, there wasn’t really a highway.
“Highway 40 was only two lanes. I remember
my mother and father saying, ‘You’re
going to go out where?’... It was like the
country. We didn’t have transportation; we
didn’t have bus service. In fact, all the kids
went to one school. Even the mail didn’t
come here. But one thing I realized is there is
such a oneness among all the families [here].
That oneness, it still remains today.”
After spending some time working for
a human development corporation in St.
Louis County, Doris began using her experience
to further develop the growing community
of Westland Acres, including the
expansion of the one-room schoolhouse.
“There were about 50 families in the
community,” Kristi Carson, Doris’ daughter,
said. “It was a large, thriving community.
Chesterfield didn’t exist back then,
Frazier family
but we had a little store; we had people that
had pigs, cows, horses; and [we had] the
school. We were pretty self-sustained. It
was a community of oneness because we
all knew each other. We all relied on each
other in one way or another.”
Virginia Hawkins, now 84, lived in Westland
Acres as a child and attended school
in the one-room schoolhouse on Wildhorse
Creek Road.
“Everybody was in there, in one little
room,” Hawkins said.
She left the area in 1965 and settled in
Rock Hill. Still, she returns to Union Baptist
Church to this day.
“You have to keep the faith,” Hawkins
said.
Doris, too, returned to the church of her
youth, playing piano at her father’s church
in Richmond Heights until his death in
1973. Currently, she is working with Richmond
Heights to get a monument placed
at Mount Zion Baptist Church in honor of
her father.
“We’re trying to get a monument, something
going, to show his appreciation
there,” she said.
After his passing, she began to play
piano for Union Baptist Church.
In the 1970s, Doris and her siblings
formed a professional singing group
Maggie Frazier and a friend in the doorway of
a Westland Acres log cabin, circa 1860s
[Clifford Frazier photo]
[Photo from Wildwood Historical Society image collection]