I am Jesse Ferrell, Frank’s only child.  It took me a long time to come to grips with the loss of my father, and an even longer time to digitize his oceans of media. It’s an ongoing project! 

Willard Franklin Ferrell, Jr., “Frank” was born on May 13, 1945 to Beaulah and Willark Franklin Ferrell, Sr. in Fayetteville, North Carolina where he spent his early years with his brothers Don & Terry and sister Margie. As a youth, Frank got to know the beach life at Long Beach, NC where his father had a vacation house. When his father volunteered to help the residents of Oak Island, NC rebuild their homes after Hurricane Hazel destroyed most of the beach in 1954, they lived there full time. Soon after, Willard Ferrell Sr. established a local convenience store and “Surf’s Up” soda shop.

Frank enlisted in the U.S. Navy after graduating high school in 1963 to avoid the draft for the Vietnam War. While on leave at the port of San Diego he met my mother Sally Schuder, an art major from the University of Iowa. In 1966, he had developed Chron’s disease while at sea and was given an honorable discharge. They got married in 1967 at Sally’s home in Marshalltown, Iowa, around the time that Frank began painting.

They bought a house in  Miseheimer, NC where they settled down and opened a plant nursery in 1971. I was born in 1974. Frank had also learned to play guitar while in the Navy, as well as picking up the harmonica. After Frank received permanent disability from the government in the early 1970s, he began to spend his time creating — songwriting, painting, and playing the guitar and harmonica which he had learned in the navy.

After retiring from home building during the mid 1980s and 1990s, Frank found an interest in photography, creating a dark room in the new house and developing his own film. Meanwhile he continued to pursue his interests in photography, branching into astrophotography, and painting/sketching, while developing a taste for electronic music, created with keyboards and a 4-track machine.

In 1979, Frank, Sally and I moved to Wilkes County, NC to begin to build a new home on the next hill over from Sally’s parents, who had moved there the previous year. Frank and Sally built the entire house from the ground up, except for pouring the basement concrete, and doing some of the electrical work. 

In 1999, Frank was hospitalized due to continued problems from Chron’s and an infection in his leg, which eventually led to his death in January 2000, at age 55.  His sister Margie passed away 5 years later. His brothers Don & Terry also passed away in 2010.

All of Franks’s paintings, music, writings, photos, etc. are offered here by me with a CC: Attribution license, in other words, feel free to use them in any way you want. Although the Internet wasn’t fully functional by his passing, he sure would love all these tech and gadgets we have these days, and he would be happy to see his art on the Internet. 

There is much more to be said about Frank and I will continue to add his art to this site, blogging about each piece, and there is still much, much more to say. 

As I add pieces to Frank’s channels I’ll post on this category of my blog a story behind each.