Ferrell Townsend said he always wanted to “do something positive with his life.”
After graduating from Richmond Senior High School in 2007, Townsend left his family’s modest home in the tight-knit, low-income Rockingham community known as Little Philly. He traveled to the neighborhood’s namesake and claimed his spot at an Ivy League university that has produced five Nobel prize winners in the past 20 years alone.
“Anyone could have done what I did,” said Townsend. “I think things that happen in your life, like how you’re raised and how you grew up, are what make you into the person you are. And all along that path you have to make decisions.
“I chose to pull myself up; I said “Ferrell, you’re not going to be here all your life.”
Prestige-heavy acceptance letters poured in from big names like Princeton and Yale at the end of his senior year. Townsend decided on Penn, where he is currently a sophomore. Townsend’s tuition is higher than Richmond County’s median household income, but he got a full ride.
“I wanted to prove that I could be something because of my circumstances,” he said. “When you start out poor, lacking this or lacking that, you strive to have a better life. Because my family is poor, I am eligible for those scholarships. There are ways of turning things around. I chose to make the best of my situation by doing well in school.”
According to Thomas Greene, Townsend’s best friend since high school, the well-rounded young scholar works overtime in every aspect of life.
“He juggles a lot,” said Greene. “He’s always going. He was part of just about every club in high school, plus his AP classes, and then helping out his family and friends.
“His needs come after everyone else’s.”
A sophomore with a 3.7 GPA, Townsend is actively involved as a mentor, fraternity member, youth minister and student government representative.
His mother, Brenda Leak, said he developed into “a unique person.”
“Growing up, he was just an ordinary little boy going through school. Then he got to Richmond, and that’s where he really excelled,” said Leak. “Some kids do their homework and that’s it. He always tried to achieve more and learn more because he loved it and would never give up.”
Townsend said his stepfather, John Stanback, was a major source of motivation.
“Despite any problems we may have had, or even though I wasn’t his, he (Stanback) was a major influence over the things I do. He instilled in me a very strong work ethic.”
Stanback worked at Richmond Pines before becoming disabled. According to Leak, Stanback taught Townsend to do things like cut grass, use an electric hand saw, work on cars and build things.
“He (Townsend) was young and all, but John had lost a son a while back, and it was like Ferrell came in at the right time,” said Leak. “John lost a son but, in a way, he gained a son. And Ferrell gained a lot of brothers and sisters.
“Then it was just, you know, realizing that we were with somebody that really wanted us with them.”
Leak described a similar feeling at Townsend’s senior awards ceremony — just realizing that all her son’s work had paid off.
“I was nervous; I knew he was going to get some awards, but I just didn’t know how many,” she said. “They called his name, and then they started calling his name so many times. I got so overwhelmed, just to see his face, to look at him after it was all over and they had announced that he was going to Philadelphia.
“He looked at me and said ‘Mom, I did it.’ And I said ‘You sure did.’”
Townsend gained three brothers and five sisters when his stepfather came into the family. But when it comes to relatives, he includes the whole neighborhood.
“People think Little Philly is one of those places where you ride through and lose your car or something,” said Townsend. “But we have a sense that everyone there is family. Everyone is treated like family, and everyone has a lot of respect for one another.
“When I was in Little Philly, no one would let me do anything that wasn’t positive. Even if I had wanted to do drugs or something like that, someone would have seen me and they would have told me ‘no’”
Greene said Townsend watched out for others in a similar way.
“If someone was having a hard time or being picked on, he didn’t even have to know the person,” said Greene. “He would stand up to anybody — baseball players, football players — and defend someone who needed defending. It didn’t matter where they came from or what their social status was or what color they were. If something was wrong, he addressed it.”
That’s why Greene thinks Townsend’s goal of becoming an attorney, and eventually going into politics, is right on target.
“He’s the type of person who would worry about the long run of our country, about helping our society. All through school he set his own morals and ideals; and when Ferrell talked, everybody listened.
“They knew his opinion was unbiased, and that what he said came straight from the heart. They respected him for who he was.”
One could say that Townsend appears to embody the motto of his school: “Laws without morals are useless.”
Or his own personal motto - “For all have sinned and fall short of God’s glory.”
“I think of that, and it keeps me from ever thinking that I am better than anyone else,” said Townsend.
“It keeps me being Ferrell from Little Philly.”
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