Person:Frank Turner (7)

About Frank

Frank Turner was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts at the beginning of the 20th century to Frederick Warren Turner, a high school teacher, and Eva Emily Brackett, a homemaker. He had an older brother, Frederick Carleton Turner.

After high school, when the United States entered the war, Frank enlisted in the US Military to fight overseas but the war ended before he was able to be sent to fight in Europe. While being shipped from one coast to the other on a troop train, Frank was one of the only soldiers on the train who did not contract the deadly Spanish flu. He would later talk about how he remembered bodies being removed from the train at each step along the way.

After the war, he returned to school and worked as a statistician during his schooling. After school, he moved to Florida, where he worked as a supply clerk in the lighting division of Stone & Webster, a Massachusetts based engineering firm. In 1921, he married Gertrude Kerle, the daughter of Arthur Kerle, a bookkeeper who worked for the same company.

Frank and Gertrude had four children – Arthur, Kay, Margaret, and Frank Jr.. At some point in the late '20s or early '30s, during the midst of the Great Depression, Frank moved the family back to Massachusetts to be nearer to family. During the hard economic times, Frank did whatever he could to support his family, even sweeping streets for public works projects. In 1933, a few years after the birth of their last child, Gertrude passed away.

After the death of his wife, Frank gave his children into the care of his aunt, Bertha Brackett, a spinster.

During this time, Frank kept in touch by letter with Madge McLean, a nurse and family friend from Florida who helped to deliver some of his children. In 1936, he and Madge were married. He and Madge had two more children, Robert and Myra.

He eventually returned to Florida, where he passed away in 1977, at the age of 77.