This internet edition was made with permission of the author/copyright holder. Please respect his copyright. It is offered on the Internet with the provision that if anyone wishes to use it all or in part they must have written permission from Bill Starr, 2202 E. Crockett, Harlingen, Texas 78550. If it is used in any profit making way he will negotiate with the user.

   "Inasmuch as you have done it to the 
 least of these, my brethren, you have done 
 it to me."

                           Jesus Christ 


                  CONTENTS 

Preface                                                xi
Foreword                                             xiii

Chapter

  1. In the Beginning                                   1 
  2. A Bible and a War                                  4
  3. Colorado, California, and Wisconsin:
     A Prelude to Texas                                10

  4. Another Beginning                                 16
  5. The Territory                                     18
  6. Healing                                           21

  7. By His Stripes We Are Healed                      25
  8. Men Eating Banana Peels                           30
  9. Roundup Time in Texas                             37

 10. The Tampico Disaster                              41
 11. The Daily Routine                                 44
 12. The Albert Schweitzer of the Rio Grande Valley    47

 13. An Unnoticed Monument to One Man's
     Human Kindness                                    57
 14. El Amigo Is Coming                                65
 15. Attention Cotton Pickers!                         71

 16. Food and Jobs for the Starving                    76
 17. Invitation From the White House                   86
 18. Volunteer Border Relief                           88

   Notes from the inside of the dust jacket:   



                     PREFACE

    He looks and dresses like a bum, but don't let that
bother you. You've never dealt with anybody quite like
Frank Ferree, a completely humble man, easily ap-
proached, and at 83, he's still going strong.
    He is a personal friend with the last four Mexican pres-
idents, and of two past U.S. presidents. He's the only man
known who can simply walk into the presidential offices in
Mexico City, sit down, and talk with the chief executive.
He is equally at ease with the most degenerate criminals in
rat-infested cesspools called prisons along the Border.
    Dozens of medals, citations and parchments have come
Frank's way from Freedom Foundation, the governor of the
Mexican state of Tamaulipas, the mayors of Texas and Mex-
ican cities, school administrations, service clubs, Mexican
welfare agencies, and a recommendation for Mexico's Aztec
Eagle Medal, the highest honor which that nation can
award to a citizen of another country.
    Frank Ferree has, I think, lit a candle, rather than
curse the darkness. It is my hope that this book will help
that candle shine forth to inspire others, to help them feel
better about their condition in particular, and the human 
condition, in general.

  -- xi -- 

                   FOREWORD

    I hardly noticed the old man when he came in. I was
busy with a news story and in those days it seemed important
to meet the daily deadline for drivel.
    So he sat down in a straight chair and waited while I
beat and pounded the typewriter, cursed and hammered
out another piece of idle gossip.
    I got paid for such tripe and drivel and I was good at
it, and anything beat teaching school, almost, so I made
him wait until I got ready to talk to him.
    He was ,tall, lanky, slow, and filthy. He wore no
wristwatch, no jewelry, no rings. Large unmanicured
toenails lay exposed to the newsroom's air conditioning. He 
wore Mexican sandals cut from treads of old abandoned
tires, and loose straps held them to his dusty feet.
    Everything about the man was gnarled, rough-hewn,
crude. He was a tramp, I decided. No wonder the others
had avoided him, sending him instead to me, the newest,
most ambitious member of the editorial room.
    When I was ready, he handed me an old sheet of
newsprint, ripped off the large rolls of paper they'd given
him in the backshop. Somehow, he'd managed to put down
a few words with an incredibly ancient, malfunctioning
typewriter. Crossouts, missing letters, typewritten lines as
crooked as a snake wandered over the scrap of paper.
    Still, what he had written made sense. It was precise,
crisp, to the point, the type of stuff easily converted into a
first-rate news story. He'd brought news about an
American-held prisoner in a Monterrey, Mexico, jail for

  -- xiii --

nearly ten years for a crime he didn't commit. Frank had
visited him in his cell.
    He spoke, and his speech was scratchy, barely audible.
I listened and wrote the news story. questioning him at
times for additional information, quickly realizing that here
in front of me and behind that crude exterior, sat the
nearest thing to a genius, and a true holy man, that it had
ever been my unearned privilege to know.
    I came eventually to know him as a firstclass man with
himself that way, a bum, easily approached by the poorest
of the poor, ready to help those who needed him most.
    I came eventually to know him as a first class man with
a brain clicking like a computer inside his head, fast, accu-
rate, result-getting. He was a man who simply would not
accept defeat, who could take without pain the icy stares,
the obvious loathing of the rich, proud and affluent-those
who did not need his help. He could take all that, and
come back for more, persistent, determined, patient, hum-
ble, until he got what he wanted results. Results that
benefited the desperately poor, those without a helper,
without medicine, food, shelter, clothing. No run-around,
no come-ons, no con games, just results.
    He had purposely modeled himself after Christ, a
humble man, full of sorrows, the most despised of all men,
yet with the power of God within him.
    When he left, I got up and shook his hand and
watched him shuffle out, resolved to find out and learn of
this man who was so much more than met the eye.
    This book is the result f what I found out. In all my
news-gathering years, and I've worked for some biggies
(Time-Life, National Observer, King Features, etc.), I've
never run across a more remarkable tale, nor one more in-
spiring.
    Frank Ferree, the modern-day Robin Hood with a new
twist. Instead of robbing the rich to help the poor, Frank
begs from the rich and gives to the poor.

  -- xiv --

    From the Congressional Record Senate, February 19,
1975 comes the following:

               THE HOLY MAN OF HARLINGEN

    Mr. McGovern: Mr. President, I recently came across
an article in GRIT describing the daily routine of Frank
Ferree, the owner of perhaps the largest heart, smile, and
unselfish spirit in America.
    Mr. Ferree lives in a shack in Harlingen, a town on
the Texas-Mexico border. His only income is a $90 a month
pension. But without a thought to his own needs, Mr. Fer-
ree combs the neighborhood every day, begging for food
and medicine, every bit of which he delivers and distrib-
utes to poverty-stricken families on both sides of the bor-
der. Unaware of any personal sacrifices he may be making,
Mr. Ferree sees to it that everyone he meets has enough
food, warmth; shelter, and medical treatment. Only when
he is sure of that will he tend to his own needs. Because of
Mr. Ferree's generosity and total selflessness, life is bright-
er and better for many needy families in the Rio Grande
Valley.
    Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the article
"Holy Man of Harlingen, from the January 26 issue of
GRlT, be printed in the Record, and I hope that everyone
will take the time to read about Frank Ferree, a mag-
nanimous human being.
    There being no objection, the article was ordered to be
printed in the Record, as follows:

 -- xv --

        Holy Man of Harlingen Though Poor Himself,
                    He Gives to Needy
                     (By Bill Starr)

    A person doesn't have to be rich to play Santa Claus.
Frank Ferree of Harlingen, Texas, for thirty years has been
helping those submerged in abject poverty along the
Texas-Mexico border.
    Yet Ferree has almost nothing himself. He lives in a
shack that is barely adequate for shelter. The two trucks he
uses to deliver foodstuffs to the poor barely pass safety stan-
dards and look as if they were found in a junkyard.
    He not only provides food, clothing, and shelter for
hundreds of persons each month, but also has located and
obtained medical attention for hundreds of children suffer-
ing from harelips, partial blindness, and facial defects.
    This is how he does it: each day he makes the rounds
through back alleys of Harlingen, begging wilted fruit, day-
old bread, and miscellaneous medicines from merchants.
    Then he loads his two old vehicles with the
merchandise along with assorted cardboard boxes, end
rolls from newsprint, and pieces of discarded lumber. He
heads for Reynosa and Matamoros, Mexico, and half a dozen
villages on the Texas side of the border. There, people who
have lived in deep poverty all of their lives await his arrival
six days a week.  
    Day after day, without ever taking a vacation, Ferree
delivers to the poor, keeping them alive, furnishing them
with scraps of lumber with which to build some sort of shel-
ter,
    During the last Christmas season, he delivered two
tons of candy to poor children.
    Each month, he begs and receives tons of bread,
candy, and medicine from several grocery and medical
chains in the United States. The managers of these firms
have become convinced of the value of his work.
    Whenever he finds persons who need operations, Fer-
ree takes them to three or four wealthy benefactors whom
he has located along the border and obtains funds for them.
    More than 100 harelipped children have received cor-

  -- xvi --

rective operations, and dozens more with horrible facial de-
fects have had plastic surgery which left them able to face
the world.
     Ferree keeps nothing for himself.
     "All I need is three light meals a day and a place to
sleep," he said. "I am a bachelor I have no great needs."
     He lives in a hovel, yet he shares even this with those
who are less fortunate. Two dozen children have been born 
in his house, with him acting as midwife. Any bum on the
street on the coldest night has a place to sleep in Ferree's
hovel, which is never locked. "I got nothing worth stealing,"
he said.
     A sixty-gallon oil drum serves as a combination heater
and cookstove. A hole cut in the floor serves as a drain
when he bathes out of a bucket of water.
     Valley businessmen call him the "Albert Schweitzer of
the Rio Grande Valley." Ferree came to the Valley thirty-
five years ago, bought a twenty-three-acre tract on the north
side of town, then saw some Mexicans picking up banana
peelings from the ground and eating them.
     "I thought something ought to be done about that," he
said. "So I did something. One thing led to another, and
now I'm into it over my head. It's a big job, but I just do
what I can and try not to worry about the tremendous needs
which I can't get to."
     Ferree sold his tract and gave the money away to help
the poor. Once he was seen downtown on a cold winter day
in an old army overcoat. Hours later he was seen wearing
only a thin shirt and pants. When questioned, he explained
simply that he had found a man who needed the overcoat,
so he gave it to him.
     "I don't try to be a big deal or anything like that," he
said simply. "I know the teachings of the Bible and apply
the teachings of Jesus. It's that simple."
     Everything that he receives in the way of food,
medicine, or money including his $90-a-month First World
War pension he passes on to those who need it.
     "The man is the nearest thing to a holy man that we've
seen in these parts for a long time, commented a Har-
lingen businessman.

-- xvii -- 

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