EMMA FRANCIS FERRELL FORY, 93, died Dec. 25,
2016, in Fort Worth, TX, with burial in Greenwood
Memorial Park & Mausoleum.
She was on born Oct. 19, 1923 in Chaney, TX, to
Frederick & Emma Walton Ferrell. Francis attended
Ranger High School in the Class of 1941 at Ranger,
TX and married Frank R. Fory in 1948. Survivors
include sons, Lloyd & Russell Fory. Siblings of
Francis were Fred Ferrell, Mary Ferrell (RHS-1945),
& Lester Ferrell (RHS-1946).
BROTHER: FRED FERRELL passed away Oct. 3,
2019. Born in Ranger, TX, Fred learned the value
of thrift & 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 WWII. 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 & 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.