COPPERAS COVE, Texas — Citizens of Copperas Cove paid their last respects to Mayor Frank Seffrood at the Crawford-Bowers Funeral Home in Copperas Cove. Locals were able to visit both Saturday and Sunday, and a Rosary was held Sunday evening.
Seffrood served 23 years in the U.S. Army. He served Copperas Cove as a mayor, and a councilman, but Pastor Joseph Solomon first met Seffrood when he was serving in yet another way.
"I met Frank on a mail route at my house, we would have conversations there," Solomon said.
Seffrood worked for Central Texas College from 1980 to 1986, and also the U.S. Postal Service from 1986 to 2010. Solomon would later see him as a competitor for the Cove City Council.
"He ran against me. He won," Solomon said. Really from then, we became the best of friends."
Solomon would later become a pastor for the Christian House of Prayer in Copperas Cove, but still saw Seffrood regularly.
“Frank would be at all of our meetings,” Solomon said.
At the Jan. 3 city council meeting Interim City Manager Ryan D. Haverlah and several council members spoke about the late mayor and the heart he had for service. Seffrood was known to be at every important meeting and community event in the area.
Staff had to work with him to fit everything in his calendar," Haverlah said. "He’s a retiree. He doesn't have a job, but he was so busy he had to have somebody help him with his own schedule.”
“He is the epitome of a servant leader," Councilman Fred Chavez said. "He was the kind of guy that led from in front. He was the first in, he was the last to leave, something needed to be done. It wasn't 'I’ll get somebody,' he was the guy doing it.”
"We found out that he had a terminal illness the day before the election," Councilman Dan Yancey said. "They told him that he had three to six months to live. He was going to be here."
Frank Seffrood was re-elected to serve a second three-year term as mayor on Dec. 11. Seffrood passed away Dec. 28. He chose to serve Copperas Cove as mayor until his death.
"We are going to miss Frank. There was nobody, there was nobody like Frank,” Solomon said.
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