On Sunday afternoon – September 20, 2020 – Erica Frazier opened her front door for me at her Maryville home. It was chaos, an indoor playground. Three little girls in diapers were busy 16-month-olds, as they are wont to be, into everything all at once. “Meet the Frazier triplets – Everly, Kensey and Molly,” Erica said. “Molly’s the one with glasses.”
On Monday – September 28, 2020 – KnoxTNToday published my Our Town Hero story on the busy and incredibly happy parents – Erica and husband David (who was at work that Sunday) and the girls. The Fraziers were firefighters then for the Knoxville Fire Department (KFD) – working different shifts at Station 1 in downtown Knoxville. They worked different shifts at work and at home, caring for the girls.
Erica was eight weeks along when she found out she was pregnant with three girls. “I had a mother’s instinct that I was having more than one baby, but I was very shocked to hear three! I’m naturally a planner, so I approached the news by doing research and developing a plan to be as prepared as possible once it was time to deliver. I didn’t feel truly overwhelmed until all three came home from the NICU, but any first-time mom feels that way,” she says.
Their girls were born seven weeks premature at Fort Sanders Regional Medical Center and then moved to the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit at what is now Dolly Parton Children’s Hospital. Together, the three girls weighed 13 pounds at birth. Today, they are healthy and smart at 7, second graders at Eagleton Elementary School – but in different classes. And when Mom or Dad picks them up after school, the teacher supervising the car line just yells “TRIPLETS” when she sees their car.
Brief history: Erica moved to Knoxville in 2008 from Duluth, Minnesota, to take a job with the KFD. She’s from a firefighting family – an uncle was Duluth’s fire chief and her late father a captain. David is an Oak Ridge native who joined KFD after his stint in the U.S. Army. He was a paratrooper with the 82nd Airborne out of Fort Bragg, North Carolina, and jumped with the 11th Cavalry into Kuwait in the first Gulf War.
A month or so ago while looking through previous Hero stories the Frazier triplets story popped up. My first thought was: “I wonder how they are now, six years later?” Two weeks ago, Erica answered my text and we visited on the phone about this story you are reading. We set up the interview. Two other Hero stories were on the schedule. This past Wednesday we had a three-way interview and I told them this Frazier triplet update story would be published on Monday, September 28.
After the interview my schedule needed updating and as I typed it in, it hit me – there are no coincidences. It would be published September 28, 2026, six years to the day and date from that first story. Karma?
Erica, 40, and David, 55, are both KFD captains now. David, a 27-year KFD veteran, is in his 14th year as captain on Engine 1. Erica works in KFD headquarters administration, analyzing data, reading incident reports, and identifying trends and analytics to help improve operational performance and manage KFD resources more efficiently. She works Monday-Friday, which adds a large degree of stability at home.
Here’s what Erica says about life today with their daughters: “… It has been enjoyable. The first couple of years were all about survival for us. All three have different but great personalities. It’s like having your three best friends with you all the time. They bring us so much joy, and things aren’t difficult now. The logistics of triplets have decreased a lot. They are such happy girls. Cheerleading and gymnastics and swimming. No issues at all. They’re healthy, and their teachers rave about their behavior and their good grades. They’re just good kids.”
With that, David chimed in about his girls:
“Everly is the brunette (the other two are blondes). She’s a Type A. At an early age she organized her crayons by size and color. She likes things to be neat. Everly is very empathetic, very intuitive about how someone is feeling. One night something happened during dinner and I was hard on them. Everly wrote me a letter and said she was sorry and not to be mad. So sweet. I still have her letter.”
Here’s his take on Kensey: “… She’s very outgoing and very athletic. She has a strong personality and can be defiant. That night at dinner when I got mad, she was giving me her bad-eye look.”
And about Molly: “… She’s the sweetest kid and takes everything personally. She is a gentle girl who enjoys a quiet environment and loves to read and use her own imagination to play and entertain herself.”
Erica said they made sure that their girls are not in the same school classes. “We want them to develop their own individual circles of friends at school – different teachers too. They are developing their individuality and learning on their own. And 99% of the time they’re like best friends.”
Everly, Kensey and Molly are having fun learning a new skill from a special lady – Erica’s 80-year-old mother, Ellie, who has dementia and lives in their home’s basement. “They love their Grandma Ellie and she’s teaching the girls how to crochet.”
As the girls began to grow up, David knocked down a wall separating their two bedrooms and now they live in one big bedroom. Each daughter has a bunk bed with a desk below the bed.
Not long before the girls were born the Frazier’s were attending the Rio Revolution Church in Maryville. Once the girls were born, someone asked if they needed help. David picks it up here: “We’d not even been going to the church for very long and hadn’t had time to build up any equity there yet, but when we asked for a little help, wow, did we get it,” he explained.
During the triplets’ first six months, 10 church ladies came to help, two a day, rotating their days, and took care of the laundry, hand-feeding the girls their bottles, cleaning the house, cooking and even doing grocery shopping. “We could not have done it all without our church family,” Erica said. “Our girls have about 10 grandmothers.”
And today, a few of those “grandmothers” still help and do some babysitting for them, Erica says.
When the Fraziers learned they had triplet girls on the way, people would make comments about how hard it may be and mention their already busy lives. David’s wonderful reply then – and now – is always the same: “Children are a blessing from God, so we are triple blessed!”
Amen and Amen!
Tom King is a weekly contributor to KnoxTNToday, where he writes the column Our Town Hero, honoring the service of our first responders. If you have someone you think we should consider featuring, please email Tom using the link with his name or text him at 865-659-3562.
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