PMP217: 57 Years Together, A Tribute to My Parents




Principal Matters: The School Leader's Podcast with William D. Parker show

Summary: <br> This year’s pandemic has made it difficult to see my parents as they live a long distance and are both in a vulnerable age group. Instead of posting about education this week, I want to share some personal reflections here instead. It was Sunday, October 27, 1963, 57 years ago at the time of this writing. <br> <br> <br> <br> Polly Kathryn &amp; J.D. Parker, 1963<br> <br> <br> <br> My mother, Polly Kathryn Carter, with wispy brown shoulder length hair in her Sunday dress, stood 5 feet 2 inches tall, assuming she was wearing heels. Standing beside her my dad, Jesse Darden Parker, stood a foot higher, 6 feet, 2 inches of sunbrowned muscle. He had tight curly black hair, high on top and short on sides and back. He wore a suit jacket, a dress shirt with a straight black tie. When they posed for a photo, J.D.’s tie clip rested just above Polly’s collarbone.<br> <br> <br> <br> Polly had wanted a church wedding, but when her father had died of leukemia a year before, the hopes were lost of having him walk her down the aisle. So after J.D. had ended his work on the farm that weekend, they had driven across the Tennessee state line into Kentucky and then across two rivers, the Ohio and the Mississippi till they came to Cairo, Illinois. At the time, it was a bustling river town where travelers could find hotels and gambling, bootlegged whiskey and plenty of churches to choose from.<br> <br> <br> <br> At the first church where they stopped, they found a minister who eyed them suspiciously. He interviewed the couple for a few minutes and told them they would have to find another minister if they wanted to elope. He didn’t give them a reason. But J.D. nursed an uncomfortable feeling that his dark skin and curls gave the minister the false impression he would be performing an interracial marriage – a union that would still be illegal in many Southern states until 1967.<br> <br> <br> <br> The couple moved down the street to another church. The minister there took them to his house. There in the presence of his wife as witness, he performed the small ceremony. I doubt my parents knew that on the same day they were married on Sunday, October 27, 1963, on the other side of the globe, U.S. Ambassador Henry Cabot Lodge, Jr. stationed in Saigon, received what historians would later call the “green light” telegram. The telegram message, approved by U.S. Under Secretary of State George W. Ball would authorize Lodge to not oppose a coup against South Vietnam President Ngo Dinh Diem.<br> <br> <br> <br> When they arrived back at the farmhouse in west Tennessee where my dad lived with his foster parents, the older couple welcomed the new couple home. The guest bedroom became theirs for the next few months as the Old House across the field was prepped and old furniture located for their first home together.<br> <br> <br> <br> The “Old House” as it was called had been built before the turn of the century. My mother’s grandparents had once owned it. Her mother was raised there. But during the Great Depression, her family had lost the home. Later when my father began working on the farm of his then foster family the Bowdens, the Bowdens owned the land and the Old House that once belonged to my mother’s family.<br> <br> <br> <br> Now in a circle ending for my mother’s family history, the Old House became the first place where my parents began their first years together. Less than one month after their marriage, on November 22, 1963, my parents celebrated my father’s 23rd birthday. That same day, John F. Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas, Texas. The nation and world stood still. And my dad drove tractors, fed cattle and started a family. By 1967, they had two boys and one on the way. <br> <br> <br> <br> My dad had been enlisted in the U.S. Navy, at age 17, in 1957 when he had dropped out of high school to join the military.