Drake hiding a son is nothing compared to Jackie Vernon, best known for voicing Frosty the Snowman in the 1969 holiday classic. In a recent appearance on Nostalgia Tonight with Joe Sibilia, one of the late comedian and actor’s sons revealed Vernon had “at least” three secret families before settling down with his wife, Hazel Sawyer.
During the interview, David Vernon, one of their three children, recalled learning of his father’s hidden past when two strangers showed up at his doorstep one evening.
“There was a woman there with a kid who was older than I was. He was probably in his late teens and a little rough around the edges looking,” he began. “The woman asked to speak to my dad, and I said, ‘My dad’s on the road, and he’s not home.’ Then, I remember she was very firm, she was like, ‘Well then, I want to speak to your mother then.’”
Vernon continued by explaining how his mother told him to go upstairs while she talked to the woman. “I heard a somewhat heated conversation going on, and then a couple of minutes later, they left, and I had to know,” he stated. “It finally came out that before our family, my dad had been married at least three other times, which I was kind of shocked to find out.”
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“This was before he became famous. One marriage I think was when he was in the military, when he was 19,” he added. “From these marriages, he had sons, and he named them all Ralph, after himself, after his original name, Ralph Verrone. But he also abandoned all these families. He left them, moved on.”
According to Vernon, however, his mother “had a plan” to make sure his father didn’t also “abandon” their family.
“When my parents were married, they had a deal. She would name the boys, and he could name the girls,” he explained. “She had sort of gotten this idea that a Ralph was an unloved kid, a kid that was left behind, and she wanted to make sure that I was never going to be a Ralph. That’s when I realized that my mom had this plan that he stayed with our family and didn’t abandon us.”
Elsewhere in the interview, Vernon opened up about his father’s “demons with depression and addiction.” He also shared colorful stories, recalling the time he was gifted a “50-year-old little person” for his birthday, and another instance where he returned from NYU to find the actor who played Tiny Tim living in his bedroom.