Erica Maria Frazier

life story

loving mother, free spirit, healer, survivor

Erica Maria Frazier (nee Beitner) passed away peacefully at her home in West Saint Paul, MN early in the morning of February 9, 2022. She was born on March 3, 1943 in a small farming village in Taurage county, Lithuania, the second-youngest in a family of nine children born to Maria Aug and Emil Beitner. According to her family, she arrived nearly two months early after her mother’s accident involving a cooking stove. Due to Maria’s burns, Erica was unable to be nursed. Never ones to be defeated, her older sisters boiled barley in water and fed it to the newborn, who, in a miracle she would repeat several times throughout her life, survived against the odds.

After fleeing the violence near their home in Lithuania, her family ended up in a refugee camp in Germany, where wily little Erica stole fruit and sweets whenever she could, hid coins she found, and cut out images of cute animals and angels from discarded wrapping paper to paste into a scrapbook that she called her "angel book." She kept it near her all her life.

Erica was astonished by the amount of food in America when her family arrived here by boat in 1952, and she loved sweets of all kinds. Her daughter remembers coming down in the middle of the night to find her mother snacking on circus peanuts and cool whip, and favorite items on her grocery list were always marshmallows and cinnamon rolls.

Erica loved to dress up for church, sang hymns confidently in her own minor key, and smoked like a chimney for 55 years. She was proud of completing her Master's degree later in life and following her calling to help others as a chemical dependency counselor. Through the 12 steps program, she attained 29 years of sobriety. Erica outgrew two inauspicious husbands and went on to forge her own way in the world. She stayed mischievous and joyful a lot of the time.

Her sense of humor and independence made her seem unsinkable, even in tough times. Once, when her daughter called her to ask what she was doing, she replied with a jaunty, "whatever I want!" When asked how she was coping with the difficulties of being in hospice for two years, she answered: “When I get scared, I just ask the Holy Spirit, ‘What now? What next?’ and then whatever reply I get, I do it.”

Erica’s love of life, sweets, Gregorian chants, TV shows about aliens, gossip, and endless cups of coffee were infectious. Her stories, while often not entirely factual, were always entertaining. She loved people, and was an incurable - and incredibly successful - flirt well into her 70s. In the weeks before her passing, she attended over 20 social events in her residential community, and throughout her entire life she was never short of friends and admirers. A few weeks before her passing, she told her daughter “You don’t need to worry so much about me. I’m a wild child.”

Though our hearts are heavy at saying goodbye, we know she's already running a group therapy session for the angels (after stopping at the coffee and donuts table right inside the pearly gates). Her parents and siblings, Martha, Wanda, Ed, Otto, and Al (and possibly Erich, who was separated from the family as an infant during the war) will be so glad to see her.

She is survived by her beloved sisters, Irene Beitner and Sina Cappos, her children, Maria May (Michael), Daniel Bullok (Erin) and David Bullok; grandchildren Phoebe, Miranda, and Reed; and many nieces and nephews: Anita, Cassandra, Chris, Christina, Cyndi, David, Dianna, Edward, Emil, George, Glenn, Jacqueline, Lee, Leo, Lilly, Linda, Michael, Mitchell, Pat, Paul, Pauline, Steven, Thomas, and Victor. She also leaves behind the many friends and adopted family members from Kindred Hospice and The Sanctuary in West St. Paul. The love and excellent care you gave her meant everything to us and held the light for Erica during the darkness of the past two years. Thank you all so much.

A memorial service will be held in Spring, and is not yet scheduled, due to the pandemic and the fact that we are still gathering our wits after losing her. Bless you for reading this whole thing! We hope you do something spontaneous in her honor.

memorial service

Memorial Service

Lithuanian National Cemetery 8201 S Kean Ave, Justice, IL 60458, USA

Memorial service scheduled for later this Spring, 2022.

Funeral/Cremation Provider: Crescent Tide Cremation Services