Ferrel Chauvin was born in 1932 in Chauvin. After serving in the Army from 1952-53, he joined Mobil as a kitchen hand, then became a roustabout, and then a roughneck. He went to work for Texaco in 1954 and worked his way up from being a derrick man, mud engineer, and driller, to a senior drilling supervisor before his retirement on December 31, 1989.