Funeral, Eulogy, and Memorial Talks
EULOGY FOR FRANKLIN HOLLOWAY JARMAN, JR.
[Talk presented by John E. Enslen at memorial service held at the Wetumpka Chapel of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints on August 12, 2024.]
A few years ago, Frank phoned me and asked that I stop by his house in Cotton Lake Estates. He had something important to tell me. I dropped by, and to my surprise he asked me to give the eulogy at his funeral service. Knowing what a determined and tenacious individual he was, I responded that I would be honored, of course, but I could not guarantee that I would outlive him.
I already knew a lot about Frank. We first became friends when I served as his attorney on various matters in the mid-1970’s—before he met Natalie and before he joined the Church. One of the last of those legal matters was in 1979 when I defended Frank and his brother John on criminal charges in Winston County where they were falsely and frivolously accused of defrauding a man out of a farm implement.
My early associations with Frank extended beyond a professional one. I bought a red, two-axle trailer from him about 50 years ago, and I still use it on a weekly basis. It has always been impossible for me to look at that worn, but still sturdy and functioning, trailer and not think of Frank. We duck hunted together in the swamp behind his home in Flatwood. He bought a used station wagon from me; he loaned me his truck when I needed transportation; we grew sugar cane and cooked up the syrup together; we cut and sold firewood.
Frank and I later enjoyed numerous Church associations, working side by side on fundraising projects; hometeaching together and then hometeaching each other due to the small number of men in our congregation; jointly giving priesthood blessings to others and receiving them from one another; Dianne gave Natalie a baby shower; Frank and I stood together in priesthood circles when some of our respective children were blessed; Dianne and I, mainly Dianne, babysat April, Cindy, and Adrienne. I actually have the exact dates for all of those events in my personal journals.
So, after my initial visit about the eulogy assignment, Frank modestly gave me information that he felt would be appropriate for the type of eulogy he wanted—simple, plain, straight-forward, non-glamourous, non-sugar coated, and, most importantly, truthful. In other words, a rare funeral eulogy. Some of his children, especially Reid, Adrienne, and Mark, have added a little additional information for which I am grateful.
Now, I present to you the real Frank Jarman:
Frank’s birth-certificate name was Franklin Holloway Jarman, Jr., being named after his father and other family patriarchs with the same name. He was born in a hospital in Tallassee, AL, on July 5, 1942, during the early part of America’s involvement in World War II.
His depression-era parents had married in 1938 when his 26-year-old future mother, Linnie Pauline Bowdoin (pronounced Bowden), was working at the cotton mill in Tallassee. Frank was the second of seven children; the seven children were, in order of birth, Shelby, Frank, Eva, John, Norma, Linda, and Carol. Some of you here were well acquainted with Linda who became Linda Maynard. John and Norma are the only two surviving siblings.
Frank’s earliest memory was when he was three years old. The war had recently ended, and soldiers were returning to their Alabama homes by train. He was with his mother, and for some reason they rode the train together from Georgiana back to Montgomery. With his little eyes being only one and a half feet above the ground, Frank remembered that the sidewalks at the train station were made of wood. What our minds remember is part of our individual uniqueness.
Frank grew up mostly in the Deatsville area of Elmore County, living in what he called “various cracker jack box houses with tin roofs.” His bedroom was crowded and windowless, and Frank would take the top bunk. He painfully remembered being poor and not always having enough to eat.
They lived for a short time in a state-owned property located in a prison camp near Ft. Toulouse, on the Montgomery side of the Tallapoosa River. There he enjoyed playing on the old Indian burial mounds and finding artifacts, including a peace pipe, and skipping rocks in the river.
As a youth, he worked in the family garden with his most favorite person in the whole wide world, his much-beloved mother. He hunted squirrels and rabbits, not for sport, but as a means of putting food on the table. Frank told me that his favorite foods were fried chicken, black-eyed peas, and butter beans. Throw in the cornbread and it’s hard to get more Southern than that. His favorite teacher in grammar school was Mrs. Johnson in the 4th grade, and his favorite subject was math.
Frank recalled an incident when he was age nine and his brother John was six. The family had two mules named Rock and Doc. He and John were riding in the front of the wagon on a bumpy field when both of them fell off. Their heads were hit by the passing undercarriage. With his ears still ringing, Frank chased after and captured the two mules. (We don’t have time for Frank’s story about Rock and Doc at the moccasin-infested watering hole.) Outside of his association with his siblings, a few school friends, and his angel mother, whom Frank adored, his childhood was not pleasant. His father was a tough, hardened, strict, prison guard by profession. His harsh profession seems to have carried over into his family life. His father was never accused of being compassionate or cuddly.
At age 14, Frank left home. In Frank’s own words: “My father beat me with a bull whip again for no good reason, and I decided it would be the last time. I left and stayed with my Aunt Grace.”
An uncle would teach Frank how to drive a vehicle. He went on to play junior high football at Holtville High School, but dropped out of high school in the 10th grade to work on a farm in order to have money to sustain his life. He later earned his GED.
Frank’s early jobs as an adult included working on a farm, working at a Frosty Morn Meat Packing facility, and laboring in the electrical trade.
Frank’s first marriage to Carmen in the early 1960’s ended in divorce, but resulted in two wonderful sons, Mark and Michael. One day, Frank took his two sons, Mark age 14 and Michael age 3, to the Montgomery Zoo. On that same day, a divorced lady by the name of Natalie took her two young girls, April age 9 and Cindy age 6, to the same zoo. It is not good for man or woman to be alone, and there at the Montgomery Zoo, divine destiny answered the prayers of both of these shy and reserved single parents. Throughout their forthcoming marriage, if a slight disagreement erupted, the tension was immediately dispelled by one or the other saying: “I am going to take you back to where I found you.”
Within a few weeks of the zoo encounter, a rarely excited Frank parked his pickup truck outside of my law office in Wetumpka, walked inside, and asked me to drop everything and come meet his new girlfriend. I walked outside with him, and he introduced me through the passenger side window to a 28-year-old young woman who was still seated in the very middle of his front seat. I must confess I was totally awestruck by her natural beauty and quite surprised that she was seated in the middle as opposed to the passenger side. She was knock-out gorgeous. Her pleasant, captivating smile and perfectly clear, softly textured complexion dazzled me. A question immediately consumed my mind, which I certainly did not reveal to Frank. It was a question for which I have never acquired a fully satisfactory answer: “How in the world did Frank Jarman ever talk this woman into dating him?” Of course, the same question could be asked of many men, myself included.
On May 21, 1977, about seven months after meeting at the zoo, Natalie and Frank were married by the preacher at Shoal Creek Baptist Church in rural Elmore County. Three children would be born of their marriage: Adrienne on June 29, 1978; Richard Scott on January 25, 1980; and Reid on January 19, 1983. Richard Scott was named after the first given names of the two missionaries who taught Frank and Natalie.
In early 1979, almost two years after they were married, Frank and Natalie began taking regular lessons from two young missionaries from The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. I had tried to expose Frank to the teachings of the Church earlier, when he was single. A young missionary named Elder Donaldson and I visited with the “pre-zoo” Frank in September of 1976. Frank’s interest level was not strong enough for us to continue, but I suspect some slow-growing seeds were sown.
I tried once again to be a member missionary to Frank after he married Natalie. On February 7, 1979, I visited with Frank alone in his trailer and presented a slide show on Chiasmus, a unique literary art form found in the Book of Mormon and the Bible. He later told me that what I shared with him was a turning point. On February 12, 1979, I gave Frank a book called Doctrine and Covenants which contains the revelations to our Church founder Joseph Smith. On February 23, 1979, Frank and Natalie attended a Church social as guests of my wife Dianne and me. On March 3, 1979, Frank and Natalie heard a Seventy in the Church named Elder M. Russell Ballard speak in Montgomery at a stake conference.
By then two young missionaries were giving regular lessons to Frank and Natalie, who prayerfully considered the missionaries’ Christ-centered messages. Those messages plainly outlined the Savior’s divine Sonship, his perfect life in mortality, his atoning sacrifice in Gethsemane and on the cross, his glorious resurrection, his subsequent visit to the ancient inhabitants of the Americas as recorded in the Book of Mormon, and the restoration of his authority and church organization to the earth in preparation for his forthcoming return in great power and glory. The message took root in their hearts and lifelong personal habits were discarded and modified forever.
There was no coffee habit that Frank had to give up. Frank told me about “getting the coffee cure” at an early age. Some of the prisoners that his father was guarding on the state farm were brewing coffee in a gallon can, and they asked young Frank if he wanted some. Wanting to show off his manhood, he decided to partake. He said it was the worst thing he ever tasted, and he never drank coffee again.
On March 28, 1979, I baptized Frank and Natalie in the first phase portion of this building. I also had the honor of confirming April and Cindy. That ensuing December, Frank was ordained an elder in the Church by Brother Ernest Pattillo. On March 25, 1981, about four years after their civil marriage at Shoal Creek Baptist Church, and about two years after they had been baptized, Frank and Natalie were joined together as husband and wife for all eternity in a solemn and sacred ceremony conducted in the Washington D. C. Temple. April and Cindy stayed at our home while Frank and Natalie were in Washington.
I previously mentioned some of Frank’s more temporary places of employment. He eventually took a long-term job with Rheem as a machinist, later transferring to Steris, where he retired in 2007 at age 65. But you might say that his primary job as a machinist was only a part-time job because he worked more hours in a continuous, never-ending string of side jobs. In addition to always gardening prolifically, and giving away more vegetables than he consumed, Frank and Natalie had a landscaping business. They were passionate about their work, and I have never known a man who had a greater physical work ethic than Frank Jarman.
Numerous were the times that Frank and Natalie would park their truck and unload from their trailer two commercial-grade riding mowers. One of the places they regularly parked and unloaded was on our homestead’s three acres of grass on Chapel Road. After immediately cranking and going full speed, non-stop, and with a quality job completed, they loaded the mowers back onto their trailer and headed to the next job in less than an hour from the time they arrived.
Frank quietly enjoyed making the world in which he lived a more beautiful place, and he was outstanding at doing so. If I were permitted to say only one sentence about Frank, I would have to say that Frank loved his family, especially Natalie, and he indiscriminately loved hard work—whatever he was working on at any given time.
Frank’s work ethic carried over into his Church responsibilities. He drove all the way to Dothan and purchased and hauled a heavy, metal, potato digging machine that we used for several years on the 30-acre potato farm that surrounded our chapel lot. But prior to that, he had allowed the Church to use his land for a welfare project to help us meet an annual assessment. My friendship with Frank bonded like cement as we worked in the hot sun, on our hands and knees, elbows to elbows, gently placing sweet potato slips into rows of red dirt previously mounded by Frank’s expert tractor work. It was Frank’s farming expertise that carried us through those welfare farm years. After the Church welfare farm was discontinued, Frank grew a community garden next to the chapel for anyone who so desired to come harvest the produce.
After serving faithfully in many important branch positions, Frank was called to serve as the 10th Branch President of the Wetumpka congregation, immediately following President Jeff Kwallek and immediately preceding President Carl H. Stephens. Frank’s leadership style was unassuming, quiet, steady. He rescued people, one on one.
I will conclude my report of his church service with this one selfless, decades long, episode. Richard Tillman Ficquette was baptized in May of 1975 in the first baptismal service conducted by the branch, a service that included the baptism of Kenneth D. Bailey. Brother Ficquette was almost too old to serve in World War II, but he voluntarily served anyway, as a lowly foot soldier. He was an unusual man: reclusive, never marrying, never learning to drive a vehicle, speaking in short staccato sentences, certainly never becoming a man of prominence as the world views it. But he was very faithful to his covenants and in his attendance and other church duties.
Frank took an aging Brother Ficquette under his wing, providing him with his own small house which was eventually moved to Frank’s backyard. Frank made sure Brother Ficquette had clean clothes to wear, transportation for any medical and dental services he needed, shelter over his head, food to eat, utilities to keep him comfortable, and brotherly companionship. Frank had a Christ-like love for this old man who at the time of his death had blessed the Lord’s Supper more times than any other brother in the congregation. There was never anything in it for Frank but a lot of inconvenience and hard work.
In time, Natalie contracted a horrible, lingering, terminal illness. As her ability to remember or speak continued to fade, some of her last repeated words, while pointing to her devoted caretaker Frank, were, “I love that man.” Natalie died on February 19, 2012. After Natalie’s death, Frank married Donnie. Frank’s marriage to Donnie was never what they had hoped it would be, and that’s all that Frank wanted me to say about that.
In summation, life came at Frank hard. There were fast balls and curve balls and knuckle balls and a few bean balls. Frank navigated forward through it all. Frank was tough on the outside and soft on the inside, the kind of guy I would want on my side in any type of battle. He endured physical pain silently and pressed on. I cannot imagine how difficult it was for a man who deeply loved movement and activity to be confined to a chair with limited communication skills. I am personally so very proud of Reid and Tiffany. When I visited Frank in Dothan, I witnessed for myself the attentive, tender, and watchful care they provided to Frank during his last stage of mortal life.
Well, that about sums up the eulogy that I hope Frank wanted me to give. Thank you for being his and my kind and patient listeners. Nobody here needs to worry about Frank. We just need to follow the many positive examples that he set for us, and look upon our Savior Jesus Christ, as Frank did, as the lover of his soul who provides ultimate redemption.
In the name of Jesus Christ, Amen.