Published: October 10, 2008 09:47 am         

Building renaming honors former Millsap ag teacher Parks

By Libby Cluett
lcluett@mineralwellsindex.com

MILLSAP - He graduated from Millsap ISD and after starting his career in East Texas, came back to Millsap in l97l to become the district's agriculture teacher.

G.B. Parks was honored on Saturday when the district officially named the agricultural science building after the retired teacher.

Better known as “G.B.” in the Millsap community and through his wife Helen Park's weekly column in the Index, he graduated from Millsap ISD in l945. He followed this by service in the U.S. Navy and graduation from Weatherford College and Texas A&M University before he started his teaching career.

Parks taught agriculture at the Gordon School for two years. He then moved to Clarksville, Texas, to work as the junior high and then high school principal. He moved up to assistant superintendent in Clarksville ISD before he married Helen and they returned to Millsap in l970.

During his tenure in Clarksville, as high school principal in the '60s, Parks experienced integration. He once told his former Millsap agriculture student and teacher Larry Walden that integration in this East Texas community, “wasn't any big deal; they were kids, too.”

“He always emphasized community,” said Walden, who added that Parks was motivated by “improving the community and the lives of the kids in his classes.”

In l97l, when the Millsap agriculture position opened, they asked Parks if he wanted the job. Agriculture classes were taught inside the high school building.

“G.B.'s vision led the school to build an agriculture complex that included two classrooms with a shop, an agriculture mechanics building, and a horticulture building,” Millsap High School Principal Darla Henry told an audience Saturday.

Parks encouraged the ag students to build as much as they could of the first ag building. Walden said they built it without calling a bond election.

“Students began signing up for these classes, and a two-teacher program came into being through his endeavors,” she added.

Parks also welcomed the first girl to the Millsap agriculture program - which was Henry - followed by a growing number of female agriculture students.

At Saturday's ceremony, several other former students came out to honor their teacher.

Carrie Johnston, who was a freshman when Henry was a senior, fondly recalled her ag days. She served as a MISD Future Farmers of America officer for three years - from her sophomore to senior years.

“We worked calves, we worked pigs and we welded,” she said.

“As a junior, we started the horticulture program and built a big commercial-sized greenhouse,” she recalled. “More girls got into the program then.”

“The main thing he wanted every kid to learn was, 'Learn to listen,'” added Johnston of Park's educational teaching.

“We never took a bus,” she recalled of fuel and vehicle economy exercised when traveling to shows and events during her MISD era. “We loaded into the back of a pickup and the rest went in a stock trailer.”

David Meals, who later became Parks' stepson, recalled an extension of his ag teacher's the “learn to listen” philosophy.

“He always told me, 'It is better to remain silent and thought a fool than to speak up and remove all doubt,'” Meals said.

To a crowd of community members Saturday, current Millsap students (including FFA officers all wearing their jackets), staff and former students, Walden reminisced about Parks' consideration of Millsap students.

“He changed something that was demeaning for incoming freshmen - the “slave auction” - into something positive - the “Green Hand Olympics,” said Walden. In the new Olympics, he said students competed in events like, “cow-chip throwing and a greased pig chase.” Students would catch the pig and keep it as a project, he added.

“He has a love for agriculture and students. If they wanted to learn, he really wanted to teach them,” recalled Helen Parks. “He liked FFA because he thought it taught students leadership and public speaking.”



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Teaching was not G.B. Parks' only career.

His interest in agriculture combined with work all started when this third-generation Millsap resident milked a cow as a high school student and delivered milk in glass bottles from his bicycle. “Making money in the early '40s was unusual for a high school student,” said Helen Parks. She said G.B. also had baby chickens, which he loved.

“At age 16 he started driving a school bus for the district,” she added. “That's how much confidence they had in him.”

Later, he grew hay and raised cattle in a cow-calf operation. “He was one of the first ones to do the round bales out here. He invented a device on his own that he could attach to his pickup and move one of those large bales of hay anywhere you want to,” she recalled.

Parks was awarded in 1983 with the Farmer's Home Administration's Zone 3 All-district Conservationist” for doing an outstanding job of conservation on his farm. “That year his hay tested at 21 percent to 27 percent protein. That's pretty high,” said Helen Parks.

She said Walden used to sell their hay with a sign above it stating, “G.B.'s Hay.”

The 50-year Mason also gave back to the community in many ways. G.B. Parks served on the Farmers Co-Op board, the Millsap water board and he was a charter member of the Parker County Water Supply Corporation, which brought water to the county's western rural areas, including the city of Brock.

He volunteered his equipment and time to restore the community's heritage as a director of the Millsap Historical Society.

“He worked to restore the Fuller Millsap Log Cabin and bring it into Millsap for future generations to enjoy,” Henry shared about Parks work saving the cabin from falling into Rock Creek, west of Millsap. “He also arranged for the log cabin that served as our first post office to be moved to town.”

Helen Parks added that G.B. arranged the donation of land, owned by Col. Lucian Pierce, for the cabins. She said that Pierce gave the land because G.B. asked him for it.

At 81, Parks stays close to home. He still looks after his cattle, checking the water daily, according to his wife. She said they just finished baling the last of their hay field for the year - 208 big round bales in their second cutting; in their first cutting their field yielded 900 square bales. “He's well-known as having the best hay in Parker County,” she added.

“He was very humbled by [the ceremony] it was very moving to see the young officers of the FFA in their jackets, who gave him a little plaque,” she said. “He said he's not sure he deserves [a building named after him].”

She followed this by noting, “He's one of those kind of guys who never had any enemies, he always tried to work with everyone.”