Weldon Frost led life with knowledge, integrity

Weldon Frost traveled the world.

He was a family man and prolific letter-to-the-editor writer.

But it was his battles over nuisance animals that connected him to many of his Longboat Key neighbors.

“Raccoons tremble at the sound of his name,” Public Works Director Juan Florensa said.

In 2010, Frost, who died July 2 at age 86, sought help from Town Hall in getting rid of raccoons in Emerald Harbor neighborhood. They were unsafe and unsanitary, he said.

Not our job, the town replied. 

Read Weldon Frost's obituary here

Ultimately, after much discussion, the town created a brochure called “A Citizen’s Guide to Nuisance Wildlife,” in an attempt to inform residents how to keep critters away from their neighborhoods.

But that wasn’t enough, so Frost began trapping them himself. As John Wild says, he was the “self-appointed raccoon ranger of Binnacle Point.”

When Frost had an opinion, he made it heard, often in a letter to the editor. As Jim Frost, one of Weldon’s two sons, said, Weldon was a wealth of knowledge.

In 2009, Frost wrote “A political ‘bucket list’ to fix America,”  which included public financing of elections, term limits for all members of Congress, a balanced-budget amendment and a meaningful energy policy.

In 2010, he wrote an open letter to U.S. Rep. Vern Buchanan, in which he said: "Be a leader, sir, on coal liquefaction. This nation has roughly 250 billion tons of recoverable coal."

In 2011, following the Deepwater Horizon disaster in the Gulf of Mexico, he wrote: "Every driller and every rig superintendent working in the Gulf of Mexico must know exactly what BP failed to do at various stages…”

And when he wasn’t writing letters, he was active with the Longboat Key Kiwanis Club. For 28 years at Christmastime, he rang the donation kettle bell for the Salvation Army, sharing in 2009  “Vignettes from a bell ringer.” In the letter, he recounts seven occurrences that shaped his time as a red-aproned volunteer. Before he began retelling his stories, he explained why it was important to him.

“I watch parents and grandparents teaching their kids that charity is a part of our lives by giving them money and watching them put it into the red bucket,” he wrote. “We are, unquestionably, a nation of the most charitable people in the world.”

Vince DeLisi relieved Weldon of ringing one day and asked him to join the club.  Frost ended up “extremely important” to the club due to his scholarship efforts.

Frost served as the scholarship chairman for the club for about five years. During that tenure, he formed the Frost Foundation Scholarship, an award given to students going to technical colleges. Mobil, where Frost had a 37-year career, matches those scholarships.

“He is, independent of anything else, a great supporter of education,” DeLisi said.

And Frost’s value of dedication filtered through to other aspects of his life. He had a sense of family and tradition, Terry Frost, the Frost’s eldest son, said.

Frost made sure the family sat down to dinner together. On Christmas, the family followed an English tradition - Brenda, Weldon’s wife, is English -- and pulled Christmas crackers open that revealed a “fancy hat” that everyone wore while sitting around the table. Jim Frost recalls remodeling homes with his dad while his mom made them tea.

“He was an excellent partner, good provider and was always interested in the kids’ activities,” Brenda Frost said.

As longtime friend Cash Register said, there has never been a better friend. As Frost’s health began to decline, Register made sure the two spent  time together by having semiweekly lunches at Kelsey’s on Cortez for $3 hamburgers on Tuesdays and 15 cent chicken wings on Thursdays.

Occasionally other people would join, usually Wayne Swift and Tony Pescatello.

“At those luncheons we were able to discuss and solve a lot of the world’s problems,” Register said.

And when he wasn’t solving the world’s problems, he was sharing stories with his sons of his adventurous days. From sailing the Libyan coast to camping in the Sahara, and waking up with a snake in his sleeping bag, Terry Frost said his stories never got old.

 “He just always instilled a sense of honesty and integrity in us as we were growing up,” Terry Frost said.