Lt. Colonel Mal Ferrell, USAF (Retired), passed peacefully into the presence of his Savior on Christmas evening, 2023, in Peachtree City, Georgia. He was 88. His devoted wife, Gloria, kept vigil at his bedside for weeks before his passing.
During his long and productive life, Mal was many things — a decorated Air Force fighter pilot who flew more than 100 missions over North Vietnam in his F-105D Thunderchief, the author of 21 books on narrow-gauge trains, a pilot for Western and Delta airlines, and a photographer whose work graced the pages of LIFE magazine.
But to those who knew him — his family and friends — he was among the best of men: a loving husband to Gloria; a devoted father to Susan, Mallory 3rd, Kimberly and Eric; a doting grandfather to his grandchildren, and a wonderful brother to Joan. He said his greatest achievements in his life were his children.
Mallory Hope Ferrell, Jr. was born to Laura Evelyn Bunn Ferrell and Mallory Hope Ferrell, Sr. in Portsmouth, Virginia, on November 23, 1935. His mother cared for the family as a loving homemaker, and his father worked as an underwater welder at the Norfolk Shipyard during World War II.
The war shaped young Mallory’s childhood. He remembered watching planes attack German U-Boats off the coast of Virginia. He and his playmates salvaged material from a military equipment dump, flying imaginary missions in their fighter aircraft created from the canopy of an F4U Corsair pulled from the junk pile.
Aviators were his heroes: Claire Chennault and his “Flying Tiger” P-40 Warhawk pilots who fought as volunteers defending China against Japanese invaders prior to America entering the war; Jimmy Doolittle and his B-24 Liberator pilots who launched their land-based bombers from an aircraft carrier to execute the first U.S. bombing of Tokyo; Chuck Yeager, who broke the sound barrier in his Bell XS-1.
In the ’50s, Mal would sweep up at the local airport in exchange for airplane rides. He earned his pilot’s license at 15, before he earned his driver’s license. Years later he would teach his 15-year-old son, Eric, to fly in a Cessna 152 rented from the local airport.
Mal said that all pilots carried two bags which prevent crashing — a bag of luck and a bag of experience. He said that the luck bag grows smaller over time while the experience bag grows larger. In filling his bag of experience, Mal would draw heavily from his bag of luck.
As a young flier, Mal took his baby daughter, Susan, up for a ride in a light aircraft. He noticed that she had closed her eyes and gone quiet. His new daddy instincts went into overdrive. Fearing that she suffered hypoxia or otherwise lost consciousness, he declared an emergency and cut a couple of other planes out of the traffic pattern to set down and attend to his little girl. As soon as the plane’s wheels touched the runway, baby Susan woke up from her peaceful nap, to Dad’s relief.
To support his new wife and their baby daughter — and to help pay for college — Mal put to work his experience from high school writing and shooting photos for his local newspaper, The Virginian-Pilot. He found freelance work for the Blackstar photo agency and Life Magazine.
Assignments took him to Cuba where he covered dictator Fulgencio Batista’s execution of revolutionaries. Hiding rolls of film kept authorities from confiscating them, but Mal still did a short stint in a Cuban jail. A journalist colleague working for the Associated Press convinced his captors it was not in their best interest to continue detaining the young photojournalist.
Mal’s writing career began years earlier in junior high school. Fulfilling a class assignment, he wrote a short story of which he was particularly proud. The teacher gave the story a “C.” Not lacking in confidence, the student writer requested that his teacher please submit the story to a state-wide writing contest. The teacher declined.
The junior high kid retyped his story — so there was no “C” visible on it — and submitted the story to the contest independently. He won first place. The teacher who had rated the story as merely average also won a prize in that contest, although it would have to be delivered years later. She won a complimentary, autographed copy of Mal’s first book.
Young Mal joined the Air Force through ROTC at the University of Miami and completed flight training in 1959. He flew missions during the Cuban Missile Crisis and in Vietnam. He and another pilot briefly held an altitude record. They established the record in an F-106 Delta Dart while testing to see how high Soviet radars in Cuba could track aircraft.
During those suspenseful days in October of 1962 when the United States and the Soviet Union waited to see who would blink first in a stalemate over Soviet missiles in Cuba, the young fighter pilot was part of a flight sent to sink a Soviet ship.
En route to their objective, headquarters radioed the flight leader to discontinue the mission and return to base. As headquarters failed to give the proper authentication code to confirm the recall order, the flight leader radioed that he and his pilots were continuing the mission as originally tasked. A general seized the mic from the airman at the radio and, citing his authority, ordered the flight to return.
“I don’t care who you are, general,” the flight leader responded. “Unless you come up with the proper authentication code, we’re going to sink that Russian ship as ordered.” Fortunately, the airman working the code book quickly got on the correct page — literally — and referenced the correct recall code sequence.
Within a year of the Cuban Missile Crisis, Mal would begin the first of three combat tours in Vietnam. There he would fly a sampling of aircraft including the: C-123 Provider, A-1 Skyraider (Spad), F-5 Tiger, F-100 Super Sabre, and F-105D Thunderchief.
While fiercely proud of his military career as a fighter pilot, Mal told his family that his most meaningful mission was flying a C-123 cargo aircraft to rescue Marines in the A Shau Valley of Vietnam.
In describing his time in combat, Mal borrowed a quote from the World War II saga “Band of Brothers”: “I was not a hero. But I served in a company of heroes.” He offered, for example, the time that his F-105D aircraft was badly shot up and leaking fuel. It was the hero crew of a KC-135 Stratotanker that bravely nursed his aircraft home across the contested skies of North Vietnam. They faced danger from enemy MiG-17 and MiG-21 fighter aircraft, anti-aircraft fire, and flames from Mal’s F-105D. Jet fuel and fire do not a good combination make.
Mal’s decorations from service in Vietnam include: The Distinguished Flying Cross, five Air Medals, the Bronze and Silver Stars. He flew more than 100 missions over North Vietnam in his F-105D, going “downtown” taking the fight to the heart of the enemy over Hanoi.
Following Vietnam, Mal continued flying with Virginia and Colorado Air National Guard units. To earn a living, he went to work — ever so briefly — for his father and uncle in the family business, Ferrell Linoleum and Tile.
He described shuffling along on his hands and knees measuring the bathroom of a vacant house for new flooring. Catching sight through the window of an airliner sailing through the blue sky, he instantly decided on his next career move. Within a few months he landed work for Western Airlines as a flight engineer on the Boeing 707.
He would retire three decades later with Delta Airlines as an international captain on the Boeing 767. Along the way he flew his beloved Boeing 737, a plane he said was so rugged and durable that it could climb trees, and the Boeing 727, the first equipment on which he sat in the left seat, flying as captain.
His wife, Gloria, supported his career, moving four times around the country for him to move up in equipment. Outdoor hockey tournaments in the subzero temperatures of Minnesota were not an easy adjustment for a Georgia girl, but the Minnesota move permitted Mal to fly as a captain with the airline for the first time.
Friends and family recall throughout Mal’s life that he loved old railroad lines. Mal wrote hundreds of magazines articles and 21 books on the topic of old steam-engine rail lines. He also scored wins in modeling contests displaying engines and rail cars which he built from scratch, frequently making his own parts.
At every phase of life from his teen years on, and wherever he lived, he would research the steam-engine lines. Whether on a layover with the airlines or vacationing with family, he would take the opportunity to find railroad artifacts, collect old photos, or shoot his own. He specialized in black-and-white photography, developing his own pictures in his home darkroom.
Mal’s two oldest children recall their father listening to an LP recording of trains. Their dad could identify the type of engine on a rail line based on its whistle and the sound of its boiler chugging along.
Many of his children’s fond memories with their Daddy come from trips chasing old locomotives. His two youngest children, Kim and Eric, recall the family camping next to a stream in the Rocky Mountains. Kim also remembers she and her brother, Mal 3rd, bumping their heads on the ceiling of their Ford Bronco as the father bounced the vehicle over mountain trials. Mal 3rd remembers flood waters carrying the family’s Volkswagen Beetle downstream on one outing. No one was hurt and the little Bug made it the far riverbank, and where it resumed trudging along, going places only a 4×4 should venture.
Mal 3rd also recalls the same little VW breaking down after dark in The Great Dismal Swamp on the border of Virginia and North Carolina. Dad jumped out to make repairs while his son nervously noticed multiple pairs of red eyes peering at them through the darkness — alligators. Mr. Fix it promptly had the little VW up and running and no one was eaten.
Mal is survived by his beloved wife of 48 years, Gloria Gaskins Ferrell of Peachtree City. He has three children from his marriage to Alice M. Moore: Susan (Gary) Waters of Friday Harbor on the San Juan Islands, Washington; Mallory (Michelle) Ferrell of Pace, Florida; Kimberly (Tim) Imberi of El Mirage, Arizona. His youngest son is Eric (Susan) Ferrell of Sharpsburg, Georgia.
He has five grandchildren: Lenna (Travis) Cherry of Yakima, Washington, Heather Ferrell of Longmont, Colorado, Anna Ferrell of Denver, Colorado, Nicholas Ferrell of Surprise, Arizona, and Katherine “Katie” Ferrell of Sharpsburg, Georgia; and two great-grandsons via Nicholas: Oliver Ferrell, and Jordan Ginnetti.
He is also survived by his sister, Joan Ferrell Dean of Virginia Beach, Virginia. He has rich ranks of nephews and nieces: Kristen and Nancy Dean of Virginia Beach, Virginia; Steve Gaskins of Cleveland, Tennessee; Brenda and Dannie Thornton of Jacksonville, Florida; Sandra and Jimmy Starling of Starke, Florida; and Joyce Jones of Hahira, Georgia as well as numerous great and great, great nieces and nephews. He was preceded in death by nephews, Albert Thomas “Buddy” Gaskins, of Jacksonville, Florida and Carlton Ellis Jones of Hahira, Georgia.
A memorial service with military honors will be held at 2 p.m. on Saturday, January 13th at Carriage Lane Presbyterian Church in Peachtree City, GA. The service will also be streamed live and recorded to Carriage Lane’s channel: carriagelanepres.com.
An interment service will be held at 2 p.m. on Sunday, January 14th at St. Luke Missionary Baptist Church in Alapaha, GA.
The family requests that in lieu of flowers, donations be considered to:
1. Gideon’s International
2. Samaritan’s Purse
