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MEMORIAL ARTICLE
Published Assembly Mar '90
John Griffin Parker NO 15653 Class of 1946
Died 11 May 1988 at Lewiston, New York, aged 62 years. Interment:
Fairview Cemetery, West Hartford, Connecticut.
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On 11 May 1988 John Parker lost his fight with
cancer. Funeral Mass was said in Alumni Chapel, Niagara University
and burial was in Fairview Cemetery, West Hartford. Connecticut.
John was born in West Hartford, the oldest of John
and Many Parker's four children, in 1925. After attending preparatory
school at Loomis School, he was appointed to the United States
Military Academy.
With his stint at West Point condensed into three
years because of World War II, John graduated in June of 1946.
He chose the Field Artillery as his branch of the Army.
His early postings were in Japan and various bases
in the US. With the outbreak of war, John was sent to Korea after
airborne training at Fort Bragg, North Carolina. Wounded, he
received a Purple Heart.
On leave after returning from the war. John visited
his hometown of West Hartford where he met Jean Hyland, whom
he would marry in the spring of 1953. At the time of his marriage,
he was assigned to the Reserve Officer Training Corps unit at
Princeton University. It was there that the young couple's first
child, John Michael, was born.
From Princeton, the Parkers went to Germany, where
John was stationed at Bad Nauheim and Baumholder. While in Germany,
two more sons were born, James Martin and Kevin Paul.
On their return to the States, the family landed
at Fort Sill, Oklahoma. It was here that John and Jean were blessed
with their first and only daughter, Maura Kay. The year 1960
was spent at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, where John attended the
Command and General Staff College and Robert Thomas, the last
of the Parker children, was born.
The next four years saw the family in Washington,
DC, and John in a staff position in the Office of Research and
Development in the Pentagon. During this assignment, John was
promoted to lieutenant colonel. Living in Annandale, Virginia
meant that the family was close enough to Connecticut to visit
grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins on a regular basis.
In 1965 John was sent back to Korea for a year
while the rest of the family stayed behind in their home in Annandale.
In Korea, John served as chief of the Personnel Services Division
of the Eighth Army.
After being reunited, the family moved back to
Fort Sill for three years. John's first assignment at Fort Sill
was as commanding officer of a Field Artillery battalion. After
being promoted to colonel, he served as deputy commander of the
US Army Training Center, Field Artillery. While stationed at
Fort Sill, the family camped throughout the American West, from
Carlsbad Caverns, New Mexico, to Yellowstone National Park.
From Fort Sill, the family was off to Stuttgart,
Germany for three years. While John served as the chief of Personnel
and Plans of the United States European Command, the family took
the opportunity to tour the length and breadth of Europe. John
also took this time to obtain a master of education degree from
Boston University.
John's final posting was as professor of Military
Science at Niagara University. This was the beginning of his
long attachment to the university. It would last until his death
more than fifteen years later. After retiring from the Army,
John served as placement director, personnel director, director
of the physical plant, assistant to the vice president for business
affairs, and chief labor negotiator for the university.
Largely a private man, John Parker was, above all
else, a family man. His life story is a family saga that cannot
be adequately translated for a wider audience. It is best appreciated,
and will always be shared, by his wife, his brothers and sister,
his children and their spouses and his grandchildren, who numbered
four at his death.
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