George Washington Fry was born to Peter Stuber and Ada Wenrich (Wealand) Fry in Denver, Pennsylvania on March 9, 1911. As a child, he was active in the Lone Scouts (the Boy Scouts' program for rural boys) and earned a number of honors, including Eagle Scout (1944). He entered Penn State's Forestry School at Mont Alto in September 1939 and graduated with his Bachelor of Science in Forestry. Fry had begun working for the National Park Service the month before his graduation as the Cultural Foreman of Monongahela National Forest in West Virginia. He went on to work in many locations including Crater Lake National Park (1936-1948), Rocky Mountain National Park (1938-1944), Lake Texoma National Recreation Area (1946-1949), Mammoth Cave National Park (1949-1951), Everglades National Park (1951-1959), and Isle Royale National Park (1959-1961) before becoming Superintendent of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park on November 10, 1963. He left Tennessee in 1969 and worked in Atlanta before retiring on June 30, 1973. George Fry died on April 4, 2000 at the age of 89.

Fry married Mary Helen Flanagan at Grafton, West Virginia on December 9, 1933. The couple had four children: Georgiana Jean (born October 23, 1939), Carolyn Sylvia (born April 2, 1943), Douglas Sterling (born May 28, 1946), and John Peter (born December 3, 1951).