Business leader pens book on pandemic through son’s eyes
John Frazier III and his wife, Nicole Xu, pose with their son Leo and a copy of their book “Leo and the Pandemic.”
An illustration from “Leo and the Pandemic”
The cover of “Leo and the Pandemic”
Pandemics are not commonplace in the United States, hitting America’s shores once every century or more. They bookend the history of Frazier-Simplex Inc., though.
Chauncey Frazier started his engineering firm in the Washington Trust Building in 1918, during the influenza epidemic that killed an estimated 50 million to 100 million people worldwide. The company operated in the city for 20 years before moving to its current location, a three-story Victorian on East Beau Street in East Washington.
Now this 103-year-old enterprise – and the world – are embroiled in a fight against a disease that, largely because of the delta variant, continues to rage. Frazier-Simplex entered the fray more than a year ago by producing pharmaceutical glass tubing that is used to hold the vaccine that fends off infection.
“We’ve really played a small, but essential role in helping to make the vaccine roll out happen,” said John Frazier III, the fourth-generation leader of this family operation.
That is not the only pandemic-related story he can relate. The founder’s great-grandson has written one as well.
John III and his wife, Nicole Xu, teamed up to produce “Leo and the Pandemic,” a 24-page children’s book. They have written it through the eyes of their first-born, their son Leon, who arrived in April 2020, a month after the coronavirus first struck Southwestern Pennsylvania.
The book, Xu said, not only is targeted for children of today, but for the future.
“Someday, our son and other children will want to share with their kids what this moment in time was like,” she said. “There’s things we can look back and laugh at … but also tragic things, like the fact that his grandparents in China still have not been able to meet him outside of a video call.”
This book had been on the couple’s radar for awhile, said Frazier, who grew up in East Washington, earned a bachelor’s at Washington & Jefferson College and resides in the Shadyside section of Pittsburgh.
“We were thinking of coming up with some sort of record or time capsule or remembrance of this strange time we live in now,” he said. “We got the idea to publish a children’s book and ran with it. It took us six weeks. It was quite a quarantine project.”
Their son, now 16 months old, was the inspiration for this self-published book that came out two weeks ago. The writing on every page is in two languages, English and Mandarin Chinese – penned by Frazier and Xu, respectively. John and Nicole, a native of China who works in the financial technology sector, met while attending graduate school at the University of Pittsburgh.
Yixuan Duan, a close friend of the couple, is the illustrator, a vital contributor to any children’s book. She is a Carnegie Mellon University graduate who has worked on stage and film productions in the United States and China.
For now, “Leo and the Pandemic” is being sold solely through Amazon, although Frazier is hoping the book eventually will be available in stores and at libraries as well.
This is a breakthrough for Frazier, head of business development for the firm. He said he has been “writing as a hobby for long time. I’ve been working on a book sporadically.”
He and Xu have been working at home during much of the pandemic, to the gratification of their toddler, another perspective shared in the book.
“It’s been a stressful time, but he’s been happy to have mom and dad at home,” Frazier said.
Frazier-Simplex, the only existing business in East Washington, also has a manufacturing facility in South Strabane Township. The firm did shut down for two weeks during the earliest days of the pandemic at the behest of the boss – not Gov. Tom Wolf.
“We had to figure out how to do things safely,” Frazier said. “We had employees working remotely.”
Wolf considered it to be an “essential business” and allowed it to operate while thousands of others had to halt operations, in an attempt to mitigate spread of the virus.
This is a company in which, historically, the son rises to the top. John III took over the business a couple of years ago from his father, John II, who still serves with Frazier-Simplex. John II, a longtime cardiologist, likewise succeeded his father, John I – who followed his dad, the founder.
’Leo and the Pandemic’ is available at https://www.amazon.com.