Don Frazier, who grew up on ranches in northwestern Nevada, has given the University of Nevada, Reno Foundation a $250,000 endowment to create the Don Fowler Endowment Fund in Great Basin Archaeology.
"Don Frazier has been a longtime personal friend and friend of the University of Nevada, Reno," said Fowler, a professor of anthropology and director of the university's Historic Preservation program. "I'm deeply honored by his creating the endowment in my name and thank him on behalf of the students and faculty who will benefit over the years from his generosity and affection for the university, our students and our program."
Frazier lived on ranches near Pyramid Lake and Clark Station from ages 6 to 19. After service in World War II, he went into business, ultimately founding Frazier Industries of Long Valley, N.J., a company that manufactures automated warehouses and materials-handling equipment.
Since 1988, Frazier has provided annual research assistantships for University of Nevada, Reno archaeology graduate students, and has participated for several weeks each summer in archaeology field projects in Nevada and the northern Great Basin.
Frazier, of Paradise Valley, Ariz., is a recognized authority on late Nevada author Will James and published a definitive bibliography, "The Will James Books," in 1998. In 1995, Frazier gave the university library's Special Collections a rare, complete first-edition set of James' 26 novels and short story collections. In 1996, the university awarded Frazier an honorary doctorate and named him adjunct research professor of archaeology.
Fowler holds the Mamie Kleberg Chair in historic preservation and anthropology, and is executive director of Sundance Archaeological Research Fund, an endowment given to the university in 1995. Fowler and his wife, Catherine, have been professors at Nevada since 1964.
He is a past president of the Society for American Archaeology, a longtime research associate in anthropology at the Smithsonian Institution, the recipient of more than 70 research grants and contracts, and the author of more than 110 articles, books and monographs on the archaeology of the American West, the history of Western exploration and early photography and the history of anthropology.
