thedrifter
12-10-06, 08:06 AM
Modified: Dec 10, 2006 01:52 AM
He beat polio, joined Marines and found bliss in a small world
Bonnie Rochman, Staff Writer
KINSTON - KINSTON - When Frank Gaskill was a boy in Philadelphia, his parents had to entrust his care to their church for a number of years. The Depression raged, and they couldn't afford to rear him.
During that time, Christmas and birthdays went by largely unremarked upon. He never got presents.
Then, when he turned 6 or 7, the tide changed.
His father gave him a junky toy ship model. Young Frank fitted it together and assembled some sails. He took pride in it, and it became his hobby, a kind of refuge.
"He got a little carried away with it," said his son, Frank Gaskill III.
Frank Winters Gaskill Jr. died Nov. 13 of complications from cancer. He was 76 and sold the final two models he built for $50,000.
Gaskill was born in 1930. Eventually, he left the church's care and returned to live with his parents. He grew up, went to college in Missouri and contracted polio. He was set to be put in an iron lung, but he rebelled, dragging himself to a heated pool at the university. He built up the muscles in his wasted legs and learned to walk again. After graduation, he joined the Marine Corps.
"He had willpower like no one I've ever met," his son said.
Signing on with DuPont, Gaskill became an executive. His job sent him across the country and across the ocean, to Iran.
New life in retirement
Then, in his late 50s, he retired.
His determination came into play again as he resumed building models more intensively than before. He would sit and work on a ship for 12 or 14 hours at a stretch.
It was the history of the ships and their times that drew him in. He amassed hundreds of books on shipbuilding. He accessed manuals from war colleges and once traveled to England to secure plans from a museum in Greenwich.
Before building a model of the USS Constitution, the nation's oldest commissioned ship, he read a journal by the ship's captain. With trademark meticulousness, he rigged his model to the captain's long-ago specs. Then he visited Boston to see "Old Ironsides."
"It's rigged wrong," was his assessment.
Based on what he read in the journal, Gaskill determined the ship was rigged the way it would have been years later and not in accordance with its original plan.
Collectors call
From his home studio, Gaskill would hand-carve each ship from cherry, birch or English boxwood, which he preferred. He hammered the anchors from brass. The diminutive cannons were turned on jeweler's lathes.
Gaskill didn't start out intending to sell his models. He didn't advertise his craft, but word spread and people soon wanted to buy them. When he'd name a price, collectors wouldn't quibble. They'd just whip out their checkbooks.
He worked on three or four ships at a time, rotating his attention among them. Depending on their complexity and size, each ship would take between a couple of months and more than a year to complete.
The largest one he ever built, the HMS Royal Katherine, an 84-gun ship launched in 1664, is a bit smaller than a queen-size mattress and 4 1/2 feet tall. It was four years in the making and is displayed in the lobby of his son's Charlotte psychology clinic.
Gaskill built more than a dozen models for the N.C. Maritime Museum in Beaufort, which will display a collection of his models in May.
The museum paid for materials, but Gaskill donated his time. He first worked inside the museum, perched on a bench where people would stop and chat about his work. Eventually, he worked from home.
He contributed models of blockade runners, warships and clipper ships, and became known for his sophisticated use of miniature power tools that made the work go faster.
"He was free of the ego problems that a lot of model makers have," said Paul Fontenoy, curator of maritime research. "If he was working on something and our research said he's got to change that, others would say, 'I'm the craftsman. Leave me alone.' He was very conscientious."
The Queen Anne's Revenge was the last model he built for the museum. Blackbeard's flagship included a cutaway showing all the equipment inside. It was a formidable project because so little of the wreckage remains that it's not clear what the ship looked like. Gaskill had to work out the ship's appearance and scale from vessel documentation from the 1700s.
That ship is part of the collection of Ralph Falls, a retired medical supply executive from Raleigh.
Falls met Gaskill at the maritime museum and first commissioned him to fix a model. Impressed with Gaskill's skills, Falls asked him to build him a ship from scratch. Gaskill built Falls a ship a year for 15 years. A model of the USS Monitor contained all the interior engines, plus the berths where the crew slept, in minute detail down to the sailors' lockers.
"He was true to the original," Falls said. "He did museum-quality work."
* * *
Gaskill is survived by his wife, his son and daughter-in-law, and two grandchildren.
Ellie
He beat polio, joined Marines and found bliss in a small world
Bonnie Rochman, Staff Writer
KINSTON - KINSTON - When Frank Gaskill was a boy in Philadelphia, his parents had to entrust his care to their church for a number of years. The Depression raged, and they couldn't afford to rear him.
During that time, Christmas and birthdays went by largely unremarked upon. He never got presents.
Then, when he turned 6 or 7, the tide changed.
His father gave him a junky toy ship model. Young Frank fitted it together and assembled some sails. He took pride in it, and it became his hobby, a kind of refuge.
"He got a little carried away with it," said his son, Frank Gaskill III.
Frank Winters Gaskill Jr. died Nov. 13 of complications from cancer. He was 76 and sold the final two models he built for $50,000.
Gaskill was born in 1930. Eventually, he left the church's care and returned to live with his parents. He grew up, went to college in Missouri and contracted polio. He was set to be put in an iron lung, but he rebelled, dragging himself to a heated pool at the university. He built up the muscles in his wasted legs and learned to walk again. After graduation, he joined the Marine Corps.
"He had willpower like no one I've ever met," his son said.
Signing on with DuPont, Gaskill became an executive. His job sent him across the country and across the ocean, to Iran.
New life in retirement
Then, in his late 50s, he retired.
His determination came into play again as he resumed building models more intensively than before. He would sit and work on a ship for 12 or 14 hours at a stretch.
It was the history of the ships and their times that drew him in. He amassed hundreds of books on shipbuilding. He accessed manuals from war colleges and once traveled to England to secure plans from a museum in Greenwich.
Before building a model of the USS Constitution, the nation's oldest commissioned ship, he read a journal by the ship's captain. With trademark meticulousness, he rigged his model to the captain's long-ago specs. Then he visited Boston to see "Old Ironsides."
"It's rigged wrong," was his assessment.
Based on what he read in the journal, Gaskill determined the ship was rigged the way it would have been years later and not in accordance with its original plan.
Collectors call
From his home studio, Gaskill would hand-carve each ship from cherry, birch or English boxwood, which he preferred. He hammered the anchors from brass. The diminutive cannons were turned on jeweler's lathes.
Gaskill didn't start out intending to sell his models. He didn't advertise his craft, but word spread and people soon wanted to buy them. When he'd name a price, collectors wouldn't quibble. They'd just whip out their checkbooks.
He worked on three or four ships at a time, rotating his attention among them. Depending on their complexity and size, each ship would take between a couple of months and more than a year to complete.
The largest one he ever built, the HMS Royal Katherine, an 84-gun ship launched in 1664, is a bit smaller than a queen-size mattress and 4 1/2 feet tall. It was four years in the making and is displayed in the lobby of his son's Charlotte psychology clinic.
Gaskill built more than a dozen models for the N.C. Maritime Museum in Beaufort, which will display a collection of his models in May.
The museum paid for materials, but Gaskill donated his time. He first worked inside the museum, perched on a bench where people would stop and chat about his work. Eventually, he worked from home.
He contributed models of blockade runners, warships and clipper ships, and became known for his sophisticated use of miniature power tools that made the work go faster.
"He was free of the ego problems that a lot of model makers have," said Paul Fontenoy, curator of maritime research. "If he was working on something and our research said he's got to change that, others would say, 'I'm the craftsman. Leave me alone.' He was very conscientious."
The Queen Anne's Revenge was the last model he built for the museum. Blackbeard's flagship included a cutaway showing all the equipment inside. It was a formidable project because so little of the wreckage remains that it's not clear what the ship looked like. Gaskill had to work out the ship's appearance and scale from vessel documentation from the 1700s.
That ship is part of the collection of Ralph Falls, a retired medical supply executive from Raleigh.
Falls met Gaskill at the maritime museum and first commissioned him to fix a model. Impressed with Gaskill's skills, Falls asked him to build him a ship from scratch. Gaskill built Falls a ship a year for 15 years. A model of the USS Monitor contained all the interior engines, plus the berths where the crew slept, in minute detail down to the sailors' lockers.
"He was true to the original," Falls said. "He did museum-quality work."
* * *
Gaskill is survived by his wife, his son and daughter-in-law, and two grandchildren.
Ellie