Best noted as the principal author of the 1975 Cherokee Constitution, Frye was the son of former Principal Chief Edward M. Frye. After growing up in Sallisaw and Muskogee, he received a Bachelor of Arts degree in History and Economics from Oklahoma University in 1941. A former brigadier general, Frye was a decorated combat veteran of World War II and the Korean Conflict. After receiving a law degree in 1961 from Oklahoma City University, he served as a tax attorney for the Oklahoma Tax commission. Between 1962 and 1975, he acted as legal counsel to the Board of Regents for the Oklahoma Agricultural and Mechanical Colleges. From 1975 until his retirement in 1985, Frye taught various business education and business law courses as a professor at Oklahoma state University. He passed away in Stillwater, Oklahoma in the spring of 1989. Principal Chief Ross Swimmer appointed Frye to the Cherokee bench in 1979.
Biographical information taken from “The First Fifteen Years of the Cherokee Nation Judicial Appeals Tribunal” written by George N. Otey, III in 1990