Horace Grover Fralin was born January 26, 1926, in Roanoke Virginia. A native of Southeast Roanoke, Fralin once lived over a Garden City grocery store operated by his father. After graduating from Jefferson High School and Virginia Tech, he worked for his father’s home-building business until he joined Waldron in 1962 to develop homes in Eton Hills. They built Penn Forest, Beverly Heights and many other housing subdivisions, apartments in Bent Tree, Bent Creek, Brookside and such commercial buildings as the Atlantic Cos. offices and the F&W office park off Virginia 419. Their Camelot Hall nursing home chain extends across the state.
Mr. Fralin was a leader of the effort to reopen Hotel Roanoke and a behind-the-scenes power broker trusted by university officials. He was a founding member of the Virginia Tech’s Corporate Research Center; a charter member of Ut Prosim, Tech benefactors who have donated more than $50,000 to the university or its foundation; and a member of the College of Engineering Committee of 100, advisers on curriculum and programming.
A former director of Dominion Bankshares Corp., Fralin “was fiercely private in the things he did with his time and his money,” said Warner Dalhouse, Dominion chairman. Fralin & Waldron has ranked in the top 100 housing companies in the nation with a sales volume of more than $125 million. On the state level, he served on the Highway and Transportation Commission and the Council of Higher Education. Fralin was chairman of Carilion Health Systems and former head of the Community Hospital board, Roanoke Regional Chamber of Commerce, and the Roanoke Valley Homebuilders Association. Mr. Fralin passed away in January 1993 at the age of 66.
Horace Fralin was inducted into the Southwest Virginia Business Hall of Fame in 1993.
