Fred Ferrell

1921 - 2019

Born in Ranger, Texas, Fred learned the value of thrift and hard work growing up in the Dust Bowl during the Great Depression. Shaking peanuts for $1 a day when he was 8, and tying hay for $3 a day at 14, Fred quit school after the eighth grade to run a mule train for the Lone Star Gas Company to put his siblings through school and buy the family farm. After leaving school, he studied Popular Mechanics magazines like they were text books. He saved a few dollars to buy a manual on internal combustion engines and taught himself to operate and overhaul them when he was 14, the same year he bought his first car, a grey '28 Model A Ford, and a trailer, for $32 he'd saved up, to cut and haul firewood to sell.
Drafted out of the Texas oilfields and into the Army when he was 20, while waiting to board a train of soldiers destined for the D-Day offensive, he was one of three pulled out of line and rerouted to Bell Labs' Telephone School. Demonstrating a proficiency for electronics, he subsequently attended Radio School and Teletype School. After the German Enigma encryption device was decrypted by the Allies, Fred was on the team that built copies of the decoder stateside, and installed the device on President Roosevelt's airplane.
As a member of the U.S. Signal Corp, "Sergeant Tex" was instrumental in building the communication system along the Alcan Highway, connecting the Alaska Territory with the Lower 48 for the first time, during World War II. He played a crucial role constructing the entire telecommunications network throughout Alaska for the next 40 years, installing the first telephones on the Aleutian Islands and the North Slope, and laying of the first undersea cable and building the first fiberoptic network. In 1989, he retired from Alascom to tour the country in his motorhome.
Fred and his daughters enjoyed a loving relationship, and they fondly remember him making them milkshakes, nursing them through the Asian flu with hot lemonade, building them a color TV and driving them hundreds of miles each week to get them to their extracurricular events.
Always willing to offer advice and lend a hand to friends and family, Fred will be dearly missed by his surviving family, including his daughters, Linda (and Wayne) Watson, Bev (and Mitch) Glasgow and Vicki Harr; grandchildren, Christie Watson and Ryan Jaramillo, Charlie Watson, Adryan Glasgow and Derrick and Dusty Harr; and great-grandchildren, Zane McCloud and Alesya and Darrien Enyart. Fred is predeceased by his granddaughter, Dani Enyart.
Fred's family invites all of his friends to join us for a celebration of his life at Denny's on Debarr at 2 p.m., on Saturday, Oct. 12, 2019. In lieu of flowers, please send or bring photos and stories of Fred to share.