Francis Marion Posey

Francis (Frank) Marion Posey, 97 years old, recently of The Barrington at Hioaks, Richmond, Virginia, died February 13, 2025 after a brief time in hospice care. Frank was born December 5, 1927 in Giddy Swamp, South Carolina and lived his adult life in Hopewell, Virginia. Frank was the third of six children born to Gary and Marie Posey. Depending on who is to be believed, he was named after either 1920s itinerant minister F. M. Britain or South Carolina Revolutionary War patriot, Francis Marion ("Swamp Fox"). He worked the family farm in his youth to help provide for his family. He then earned college degrees in 1952 from Newberry College, Newberry, South Carolina and in 1950 from Holmes Bible College, Greenville, South Carolina.

Despite a first date to a funeral home where he worked part-time, Jeraldine (Jeri) Tew of Hopewell, Virginia, a classmate at Holmes, accepted his marriage proposal. They were wed in Hopewell in 1954. Invariably when the couple was introduced to strangers as Francis and Jeri Posey, he mistakenly was called Jerry and she, Frances. The nickname Frank cured that confusion.

At the time of his marriage, Frank was enlisted in the U.S. Army with the rank of Specialist Third Class. He hitchhiked home to Hopewell every weekend from Ft. Dix, New Jersey, where he initially was stationed. Following a deployment to Germany, Frank returned to Hopewell and started a family. After having three children in three years, in 1960, he and Jeri accepted a posting to Lusaka, Northern Rhodesia (now Zambia) in Africa as missionaries for the International Pentecostal Holiness Church. They moved with Kevin, Pam and Joye across the globe in a time of significant political unrest in Africa. After six months, which undoubtedly seemed much longer, they were forced to return to the United States, cutting short what had been viewed as potentially a permanent relocation.

Frank became a civil service employee at the U.S. Army Quartermaster School, Fort Lee, Virginia, where he remained until his retirement at age 58 after 31 years of service. He worked as a platform instructor in parachute rigging for heavy equipment. Despite never actually jumping out of an airplane himself, he packed parachutes for use by paratroopers in the Cuban Missile Crisis in October 1962. A fourth child, Todd, joined the family in 1963. Later, Frank worked as an education specialist in training publications, contributing to quarterly safety manuals and writing field manuals on rigging equipment and materiel for airdrop.

With the steadiness of civil service employment to support his family, Frank and Jeri also variously served as co-pastors of numerous small, rural Pentecostal Holiness Churches across Virginia, the congregations of which had insufficient membership and resources to support a full-time pastor. They would travel every Sunday to Mount Olive, Orange, Goldmine, and others, with their four small children in tow. They often drove a couple of hours each way and spent the afternoons between morning and evening services napping on pews in the sanctuary after being invited for lunch in the homes of local church members.

Frank enjoyed lifelong interests of hunting, fishing and gardening. He killed his last deer, an 8-point buck, on his 85th birthday. For most of his life, he could not accept that he really was no longer a farmer. At various times, he kept chickens, quail, pheasants, a pig, a calf, two Arabian horses, and two ponies on the suburban lot in Hopewell. And, yes, he finally did get the tractor that he had dreamed of as a teenager when he plowed the fields of the family farm with mules hitched to a plow. For 20-plus years, he gardened much of the family's one-acre lot on Belmont Avenue, supplementing the family larder to feed a family of six on a civil servant's salary. However, he continued this practice long after he and Jeri were empty-nesters until the retired couple was filling three freezers and a bookcase with preserved produce, fish and game, far beyond their ability to consume it. Until a year ago, he would spend days every winter shelling buckets of pecans from the front yard tree on Cambridge Place and freezing them for another year's worth of the beloved chocolate pecan pies that he even made himself. The new owner of that house likely will be finding pecan shells in the sunroom for many years to come. He also made a production every Christmas of creating his own substantially solid fruitcake, which was an acquired taste.

Frank had lots of folksy stories about living a simple farm life in a large family in the rural South in the 1930s and 40s. As years went by, grandchildren expressed wonderment that Paw ever could have been their age, much less lived the simple life in the tales that he told. In 2011, Jeri captured stories of Frank's childhood on the farm in the children's book Paw Was Once A Boy, illustrated by their grandson, Gideon Slife.

In his senior years, Frank enjoyed jigsaw puzzles until his failing eyesight made it too difficult to enjoy. He continued to read voraciously until his death, despite having macular degeneration. He was partial to Western fiction, stories of the American Old West frontier, especially authors Zane Grey and Louis L'Amour.

Always active in the church, he taught Sunday School for decades. Most recently, he was a member of Abundant Life Church in Prince George County, Virginia.

Frank is survived by Jeri, his wife of 70 years; children and spouses (Pam Parsons, Joye and Joseph Slife, Todd and Kathy Posey); grandchildren and spouses (Stuart and Amber Posey; Lauren Posey; Gideon, Reuben and Jared Slife; and Karla Posey); great-grandchildren (Christian Blankenship, Aubrey and Reid Posey; Billy and Danny Posey); four of his siblings (Esther, Vera, Velma and Ed) and fictive kin, Nancy Karabaich and Joe D. Jenkins. His eldest son Kevin died in 2023.

The funeral will be Tuesday, February 18, 2025 at 11 a.m., at Abundant Life Church, 6500 Middle Road, Prince George, VA 23875. The family will receive friends at the church beginning at 10 a.m. A reception will follow the service. Interment will be private.