LITTLE ROCK — Rita Daugherty Ferrell didn’t need a driver’s license because she had two strong legs to take her through the streets of Fayetteville. However, residents who affectionately called her “Nana” didn’t let her get too much exercise.

“She would hitch a ride,” said her daughter, Rachael McGrew. “I’ve heard many times, ‘I saw your mother and gave her a lift.’”

Ferrell died Monday at her Fayetteville home from unknown causes, her family said.

She was 98.

In 1936, Ferrell met Bill “Groundhog” Ferrell, a handsome athlete who got his nickname from hitting ground balls to baseball players, McGrew said.

“She was justswept off her feet, and she said he had a marvelous tidewater accent,” coming from Virginia, her daughter said.

The couple married and had seven children.

“One explanation [for the large family] was my mother is Catholic,” McGrew laughed. “She was kind of like the mother hen ... she was always busy either ironing, cleaning or taking care of the baby, washing diapers, bottles, just what mothers do.”

In 1950, the family, originally from Pennsylvania, moved to Fayetteville where her husband became an athletic trainer and baseball coach at the University of Arkansas.

After having four more children, Ferrell ran a tight ship, threatening long punishments for misbehavior.

“My mother was more the excitable one,” McGrew said. “For the first couple of days [of a punishment], she stuck to her guns, but she had other kids” to discipline.

In 1967, Ferrell’s husband died of leukemia, leaving her with five young children at home.

“She handled it as well as anyone,” her daughter said. “My mother hadn’t worked outside of the home in many,many years. He did a lot of the business end of the household, and my mother didn’t drive.”

Ferrell began working in retail again, including in the children’s department at The Boston Store at the Northwest Arkansas Mall for more than 10 years, said her son, Bobby Ferrell.

“She knew about kids clothes, obviously, having little children,” McGrew said. “She was always thinking about frugality ... was it a good fabric, would it last?”

In her 50s, Ferrell finally agreed to take driving lessons from her son-in-law.

“He took her out several times, but she decided she was too old and too nervous,” McGrew said. “And I think she might have nicked a mailbox on a driving spree.”

Ferrell faithfully went to daily Massand started road trips by saying a rosary.

“For many, many years, every night we knelt in the living room and said the rosary,” McGrew said. “Faith, that was what she was all about.”

Typically, the harshest words Ferrell uttered were “Thanks be to God,” in all situations, “it was just the intonation of how she said it,” her daughter said.

However, her mischievous Siamese cat and her nephew’s pet made her lose her cool once during a radio-patched phone call with her son, who was serving in Vietnam in the 1960s.

“Here we are on an international radio halfway around the world and I hear, ‘Hells bells the cat’s got the gerbil’ and I hear the phone go down,” Bobby Ferrell said with a laugh.

Ferrell’s faith and positive attitude earned her the nickname “Hap,” short for happy.

“If there had been an event that put people in the doldrums, she’d come up with something that would put a smile on your face,” her son said. “That’s the neat thing, either way she would always smile.”

Arkansas, Pages 18 on 11/08/2012