Frank Kile Turner

The life of Frank Kile Turner began on June 21, 1939 in the bustling railroad town of Tucumcari, New Mexico. Frank grew up in the idyllic time of post-war America. Scenes from his life could have been plucked right of a Norman Rockwell painting; playing sports with friends, hunting and fishing, and perhaps his favorite enterprise of all, riding in the caboose with his dad. Franks father, also named Frank, was a conductor for the Southern Pacific Railroad, and young Frank loved when his dad would bring him along for a weekend, or even just overnight, journey.
While in high school, Frank found that he had a real talent for singing. He was convinced to join the school choir, ostensibly because of the large amount of girls who had joined. However, as time went on, Frank found that he could really carry a tune, and this became a lifelong passion.
However, Frank was not destined to live out his days in the mesa country of eastern New Mexico. His mother Katherine, who was a former school teacher, made sure that Frank and his younger brother Terry, both understood that they were destined for higher education. So, after graduating in 1957, Frank found himself going down to Roswell, New Mexico where he would spend the next two years at New Mexico Military Institute. Then it was on to East Texas State University in Commerce, Texas, which by his own account, was a much more enjoyable experience than military school.
Frank was fond of saying, "Theres two things I wanted to do with my life, join the Marines and work on the railroad.". In 1961, he started the first part by becoming a 2nd Lieutenant in the United Stated Marine Corps. Little did Frank know that this decision would lead him to meet the greatest love of his life, his wife Rosalie.
After finishing Officer Candidates School and earning his commission, Frank began training at the Basic School, also located in Quantico, Virginia. One night, he happened to look across the room at a barracks party and spotted a girl he just couldnt take his eyes off of. That girl was Rosalie Alico, and they would spend the rest of their lives together after that night.
You cant talk about Frank without talking about Rosalie. They were truly a pair. Franks career in the Marine Corps was tough and stressful, including a 13-month deployment to Vietnam in 1967-1968. But they had each other, and then they added two sons. Terry William was born in 1964, and Kile was born in 1967, just six weeks after Frank arrived in Vietnam. This family of four became the center of Franks world, which is why he decided to leave the Marines in 1969 and do the other thing hed wanted to do all his life, work on the railroad.
In 1970, Frank started his railroad career as an assistant trainmaster with the Norfolk and Western. He would rise through the ranks, and move his family all across the country, which included a stop in Franklin, Virginia where Frank and Rosalies youngest son, Joel, was born in 1978. Eventually Frank would take quite a leap of faith in 1988 and join a small railroad in Jackson, Mississippi to become their Vice President of Operations and Transportation. A year and a half later, Frank was running the whole show as President and CEO of MidSouth Railroad. Now Frank was not only working for the railroad, he was running the railroad.
However, not everything in Franks life had turned out as expected. In November of 1974, Frank and Rosalies son Terry William lost his battle with childhood leukemia. Though this tragedy rocked them to their core, Frank and Rosalie stood fast in their faith, their love of their son Kile, and their love of each other. Frank never fully got over the death of his firstborn, but he also did not let it define him. Instead, he continued to approach life with the same zeal and enthusiasm that he always had, but this time with an added aspect of reverence to its finality.
Frank would eventually leave MidSouth and become a Senior Vice President at CSX in Jacksonville, Florida. Then, in the final act of his professional career, he worked in Washington, D.C. as the President of the American Short Line and Regional Railroad Association, which was an advocacy group for small railroads.
However, as Frank related to one of his sons, he got tired of traveling without his wife. So in 2003, he retired, for good this time. This third act of his life did not bring with it stagnation and boredom though. Instead, he found several projects, and even more people, in which he would invest his most precious commodity, his time. Frank loved people, he loved helping people. Whether it was a high school basketball team in northern New Mexico, his grandchildren, someone he knew from his many business dealings, he didnt care. If you needed help, Frank Turner would be there. During their 61 years of marriage, Frank and Rosalie lived in 18 different places, and at each stop on their journey, Frank made a difference in peoples lives. It is truly impossible to fully measure the 1000s of lives touched by this amazing man.
But the biggest cause that Frank championed had always been Rosalie. And as both of them were enjoying their golden years, Rosalie began to focus on one of her great passions, the Civil Rights movement. Through connections at Franks alma mater, now renamed Texas A&M, Commerce, Rosalie began to speak on, and write about, the Civil Rights movement so that younger generations would not forget the lessons learned from that time in American history.
Through that enterprise, Frank and Rosalie devised one of their biggest impacts on the world, their Civil Rights tours. It started out as part of a college course where Frank and Rosalie took students from Texas A&M, Commerce on a week-long tour of the battlegrounds of the Civil Rights movement throughout Alabama and Mississippi. These tours became their passion, and they branched out to taking groups from their churches and communities. Through relationships made from these tours, Frank and Rosalie became modern day activists in the fight for civil rights and voting rights.
The life of Frank Turner is difficult to put into words because it encompassed so much. In his last days, he stated many times, "What a great life I have had!" He brought so much life and light to all those who knew him. His laugh, his love, and his zest for life were unmatched. He will be truly missed.
Frank is preceded in death by his parents, Frank Norman and Katherine Kile Turner, his brother, Terry Norman Turner, and his eldest son, Terry William Turner. He is survived by his wife Rosalie, his sons, Kile (Sara) and Joel (Kelly), and six grandchildren, Abby, Grace, Lexi, Kit, Sophie, and Lily.
A memorial service will be held for Frank on Saturday, March 8th at 1:00pm at Epworth United Methodist Church, 3002 Hope Valley Rd, Durham, North Carolina. In lieu of flowers and gifts, the family requests donations be made to either the Durham Freedom School, or St. Jude Children's Research Hospital.