Vance Fry
Admiral Vance Fry, US Navy Retired Commander Naval Expeditionary Support Force
By the time of his retirement, Central High School grad Vance Fry had worked his way into the upper echelons of the U.S. Navy. He got his engineering degree from the Naval Academy in 1960 and achieved the lofty rank of rear admiral when he retired in 1995, following more than three decades of service.
His career spanned more than a dozen stops as he worked his way from Naval Academy student, to supply officer, to instructor, to a command post in which he oversaw eight of the Navy’s 14 cargo handling battalions that were deployed to Southwest Asia, Europe and the Pacific in Operations Desert Shield and Desert Storm. He had as many as 3,000 sailors under his command.
Vance Fry has been a Naval officer, an engineer, a business owner and went to law school at the University of Tennessee, which eventually led to Fry being chosen among 15,000 nominees in 2005 to be selected as the Tennessee Bar Association’s “pro bono lawyer of the year.
