Wayne Wesley Frost (Age 88)
Memorial service info
Wayne Wesley Frost of Alexandria died on October 4 at Virginia Hospital Center (VHC) in Arlington at age 88. Born in Seattle, Wayne graduated from Ballard High School in 1955, where he was a standout football player. During his college freshman year, he played on the University of Washington Huskies football team, then transferred to the University of Oregon. He was as an Offensive Guard on the Duck team that played in the 1958 Rose Bowl.
“Wayne did everything he wanted, and he did it well,” says his wife Mercedes, of Alexandria. He had great curiosity and became expert in many areas. He was a creative, generous and empathic person, belying all football player stereotypes. Some have described him as a “Renaissance Man.”
As a boy he loved working summers at his grandparents’ farm in Ferndale, WA, near the Canadian border and over the years posted many historic photographs about the farm on his Facebook page. He never forgot Seattle’s Ballard neighborhood, where his parents’ last home (a round house designed by Wayne’s mother) overlooked Golden Gardens Park from a bluff above Puget Sound.
Wayne inherited his mother Hazel’s artistic, design and photographic talents (and love of travel abroad) and was comfortable in various media including, more recently, AI software.
In 1964 Wayne sold his interior design business in Seattle and moved to Northeast Brazil as a Peace Corps Volunteer. He consulted with a women’s artisan cooperative that was making batik wall hangings in the backlands of the state of Paraiba. Many Peace Corps Volunteers still treasure the batiks they bought, many of which Wayne designed using Brazilian rural scenes. The cooperative still exists and some of his designs continue to be used. Wayne loved the work and Brazil, staying after Peace Corps service despite his difficulty finding shoes large enough for his 16 ½ -sized feet.
Throughout his life Wayne found himself accidentally at the vortex of action. During a sightseeing stop in the Belgian Congo with his father on their way to the 1960 Summer Olympics in Rome, the Belgian colonial government was overthrown. Being white men, Wayne and his father probably would have been shot in their Leopoldville hotel room had they responded to rebels pounding on their door in the middle of the night. Luckily, they were sound sleepers. Years later, while he and wife Mercedes were in Bolivia, the street where they were staying was strafed by rebel jet fighters during a revolution. They were pinned down in their hotel for several days.
Money and possessions mattered little to Wayne. In 1976, on a business trip to Guatemala, he and Mercedes were caught in the country’s worst-ever earthquake. It was 7.6 on the Richter Scale, with 76,000 injuries and 23,000 deaths. Wayne gave Guatemalan people all his money and many of his clothes.
Wayne met Mercedes da Silva in Recife and they were married in 1973. They have been inseparable ever since. Back in the states, he and Mercedes lived in Seattle while consulting in developing countries around the world, then settled in Alexandria. They spent more than a decade as agents for Weichert Realtors.
They were proud of their son Michael (born in 1984) and his achievements as a 400-meter runner and shot putter in Special Olympics (which they helped to coach). Mercedes was the love of Wayne’s life. She said that his last words to her as she entered his hospital room were, “Well hello, beautiful!”
Wayne was preceded in death by his parents, Forrest and Hazel Frost. In addition to Mercedes and son Michael of Alexandria, he is survived by brother Darrell, of Mesa, Arizona.
A service is scheduled Sunday, November 9, starting at 1 pm at the Arlington Presbyterian Church, 918 S. Lincoln St., Suite 1, Arlington. Friends are encouraged to visit Wayne’s Facebook page at wayne.w.frost.
The following memorial event is planned.
Celebration of Life
Sunday, November 09, 2025 from 1 pm-3 pm
Arlington Presbyterian Church
918 S. Lincoln St., Suite 1, Arlington, Virginia, 22204
