James Robert and Eleanor Ryan Parce

My parents were born in New York in 1928 to middle class parents in stable, church-going Catholic families. Both of my parents’ fathers had stable employment, my father’s father brought the telephone system to central New York and my mother’s father was a railroad station manager. Both of my grandmother’s were primarily stay-at-home mothers. My father’s mother was an active member of local theater and my mother’s mother ran a small B&B in upstate New York in the summers.

Both of my parents grew up in small towns and neither traveled beyond the borders of their communities. Both attended small elementary and high schools with the same group of devoted friends. For over a dozen years, the Depression and WW II were integral to their daily lives. Their families grew Victory gardens and knew all about rationing and few gifts for holidays and WW II related tragedies.

My father’s parents were English Protestant and Irish Catholic – today’s version of a mixed race couple. My father’s best friends were Italian and black; boys he played baseball with, worked on the railroad, groomed horses and delivered ice with. He saved his money to buy various old jalopies, one of the only kids in high school to own a car. After graduating from high school he committed to the Navy, received a scholarship to go to college and in 1949, with the early onset of the Korean War, rode a train to Pensacola, Florida with a buddy to begin flight training to become a carrier pilot. He had never been away from home. This trip would lead to a 30 year voyage with the Navy where he was a carrier pilot (Korea three times), intelligence officer and military diplomat.

He saw racial discrimination in the American South, abject poverty in Asia, failed strongman socialism in South and Central America and the relentless human spirit that strove to overcome these maladies and more. He died in 1998 from cancer. I can truly say he was the best man I ever knew.

My mother’s parents were Scotch Catholic and Irish Catholic from NYC. My mother’s mother was orphaned as a teenager and taught my mother the value of a nickel. My mother’s father never owned a car until he retired. He walked to work every day. After high school my mother attended a New York teachers college in the town where my father lived. They met at a dance on a blind date. My mother too had never traveled anywhere. She put her faith and trust in my father, had four children and lived the standard life of a Navy wife, which included many, many months of separation, frequent moves and a highly unpredictable and frugal lifestyle.

Both of my parents stressed faith, education, sports and sportsmanship and self-reliance, but it was my mother who most closely guided us kids to learning and self-improvement. After my father died, she lived on her own for 22 years in their home in mid-state New York. She died in 2020 from heart failure.

I am offering The James Robert and Eleanor Ryan Parce Scholarship for Nursing in their memory. If you do your best and hold yourself accountable for your own decisions and performances, you will always come out on top.

Good luck.
John D. Parce