A Cameron man was honored with a flag in his name that will remain standing through Labor Day week. Flags honoring service and America begin on both sides of Carthage Street from the top of the hill past the bridge and at each antique shop down to the railroad tracks toward Phillips Memorial Park.
Lawrence Franklin Frame is a month shy of 90 and has traveled abroad during his career in the United States Army.
Frame entered the Armed Forces in 1947 and had basic training in Virginia when he was 16, and in 1952, he was stationed in Newfoundland. He met his wife there during his four-year tenure.
He and Loraine have been married for 63 years. They raised three daughters. Pam Porter lives in Cameron. Lea Whitman lives in Wilmington. Cathy was in a fatal car accident when she was 21. The couple has two grandchildren and two great-grandchildren.
Friends refer to the couple as Poppy and Nana.
“I babysat for all the children around here,” Nana said.
Frame was in the Signal Core, and from his duty station in Germany traveled to Vietnam in 1966. He worked in Dalat on top of a mountain, and when he was stationed in Fort Bragg in 1968, he “pulled some brass strings” to help his baby brother.
His brother was up for a tour in Vietnam in infantry. So, Frame volunteered to return to Vietnam to keep his brother from being in harm’s way.
He wiped a tear from his cheek with a white hanky. “Every time I see him I get choked up. He still thanks me,” Frame said.
Frame set up communications all over South Vietnam and afterwards went to Georgia, and then retired.
“I do as little as I can get away with,” Frame said. “When I got out, I was at Cornell-Dubilier in Sanford making two dollars an hour and three-fifty when I left seven years later.”
The retired couple attends Church in Carthage.
After six decades of marriage, the couple’s relationship is give and take even at mealtime.
“I pick the raisins out of his Raisin Bran every morning because they’re too hard for him, and I like them,” Nana said.
“Plain bran is too hard to find,” Poppy said.
“I like the raisins,” Nana said. “The kids make fun of us,” she said as they laughed together.
Article and photo by Sandhills Sentinel Journalism Intern Stephanie M. Sellers.
