Beloved retired New Haven principal who really ruled with love dies
Pam McLoughlin
FacebookTwitterEmail
Jeffie Frazier, the the principal of Wexler-Grant Community School, gestures to her friends in the parking lot of the newly renovated school on Foote Street in New Haven in 2002./ Hearst Connecticut Media file
NEW HAVEN - Reginald Mayo was superintendent of schools when the late Jeffie Frazier was principal of Helene W. Grant School, yet he always wore his best shirt and tie when he visited the school he didn’t want to catch any flack for not looking good enough.
“She was a no-nonsense type of person,” Mayo, now retired, said of the late Frazier. “Jeffie didn’t work for me - I worked for her. … Working for Jeffie, I became a better person, superintendent.”
Artist Alfred Conteh and advisor Jeremiah Ojo. Photo: Funmi Foster (Out The Frame Photography).
A few years ago, the former Atlanta art dealer Jeremiah Ojo was FaceTiming with an artist when he noticed in the background some figural paintings incorporating African fabrics. Thinking the work had potential, he reached out to the artist who made them, an MFA student by the name of Patrick Quarm.
Ojo arranged for Quarm to show his paintings to a Houston-based collector of African diasporan art. Loading a bunch of work into a rental car, Quarm drove nine hours to the meeting which ended with him securing his first art patron.