[courtesy of my cuz Jean/Newport News Va] Serving & preserving Willie Parker protects the practices and people of St. John's Church in downtown Hampton By MARK ST. JOHN ERICKSON 247-4783 July 20, 2008 HAMPTON - Willie Parker doesn't make his way around the rambling brick buildings and headstone-filled grounds of old St. John's Church the way he could when he was a boy of 11. At 85, he's lost a step or two along the way — and he walks with the measured pace of someone up in years. But just as telling in any explanation of his deliberate gait is the dignity of a man who has little to prove after more than 70 years of service. First as a child, then as an adult and for many years as a venerated elder, Parker has worked at the historic downtown Hampton church — longer than anyone else on record. He started by washing windows and scrubbing floors, then moved up to cutting grass and digging graves before taking on the demanding responsibilities of St. John's sexton. Over the years, he's made the church and grounds ready for hundreds of weddings, baptisms and funerals — including those sparked by the lives of some of Hampton's most important and prominent people. He marked their rites of passage through the careful execution of countless, seemingly incidental yet essential tasks, ranging from the proper placement of candlesticks, funeral palls and baptismal fonts to the tolling of the church's bells. Despite his age, Parker still shows up for work early each morning, unlocking the doors of the church's parish house first, then turning on the lights before walking over to the ancient sanctuary. There he turns his key just as he has for years, intent on walking in, surveying the evocative stain-glassed space and ensuring that everything inside remains just as he left it. "I first came here when I was a little boy. I was doing it to help my grandmother," Parker says, reaching back to the days of the Great Depression. "Sometimes people ask me now, 'When are you going to leave that church?' — and I say, 'I'll leave them when I'm dead and gone.' " A child's path Parker was just a hungry kid looking for after-school work when he hooked up with what would become a lifelong vocation. With his mother dead and his father gone, he lived with his elderly grandmother in a rented house between Lincoln and Grant streets in the town's old west end. "Things were tight. She was getting food from the welfare," Parker recalls. "And I told her I was going to help her by finding a job." Manda Parker may have had some doubts about her grandson's prospects. She wasn't the kind of woman who put up with any kind of foolishness — especially from a child. "She said, 'You think you're a man now,' " he says. "But I said, 'No — it takes a lot to be a man. And I don't know how to do it. But I'm going to learn.' " Just how long Parker took to prove himself he can't remember. His first break came at a grocery store on Queen Street, where a kindly woman named Mrs. Pickle noticed his eagerness to work in return for handouts. Walking the boy down the street, she introduced him to Howard Saunders, a long-time member of St. John's Episcopal Church, who gave the nervous lad a good talking to before agreeing to a tryout. "He said, 'Are you going to listen and do what you're told?' and I said, 'Sure,' " Parker recalls. "I went from dusting pews to scrubbing floors and washing windows. I washed every window in the parish house — inside and out — and then I'd go over to the church and wash every window there, including the stained glass. I climbed up and down all over the place on those ladders." The apprentice Parker worked under the direction of sexton Solomon Fosque for a year, then under his successor, a hard-headed man named Jimmy Franklin. Eager to teach his young charge "how to be a man," Franklin had him pitch in with the older men when a spurt of deaths required the digging of five new graves in unusually short order. But the boy proved woefully undermuscled when he tried to push an overfilled wheelbarrow away from one of the gaping holes. "I had it too full. I just couldn't roll it. I was too little and too weak," Parker says. "It tipped over and flipped me into the grave head first — and then all the dirt came down on top of me, too. I was scared — and I hollered so loud that the cops came out to see what happened." The setback in the graveyard sent the kid back home, where his grandma lectured him about the folly of quitting. "I didn't know if I wanted to work here or not, and she said — 'Don't you quit!' " Parker recalls. "She told me, 'Those people will be good to you once they get to know you.' " Eventually, Parker returned, made up with Franklin — who'd been caught down in the hole, too — and set about proving himself with renewed determination. Inside the church and parish house, he gradually learned to clean the pews and windows more quickly and thoroughly. Out in the cemetery, he mastered the sickle and the swing blade, becoming so proficient that he transformed the overgrown landscape. "This cemetery looked like a hay field. It was so full of weeds and grass that nobody wanted anything to do with it, and Franklin said, 'You think you can make it better?' " Parker says. "I said, 'Sure, just give me some time,' and I started building myself up. "The more I did it, the more I liked it — and the better it looked. I got to where I could cut it all — 18 acres — by myself. And we didn't have a power mower then. I was the power." As he grew and became a man, Parker mastered the art of digging graves, too. He's planted many of Hampton's finest, he says, during his long career. "What I learned was to dig one corner at a time — then work back to the center," he says. "Once I learned to do that, I could dig them like a mole." Duty calls Parker served in the Army during World War II and — when he returned — looked for a new job at the shipyard. There, he bumped into a prominent church member who offered him a raise, persuading him to go back to St. John's and work with what became a series of much older sextons. As a young black man at an all-white church during the late 1940s and '50s, things didn't always play out smoothly. Critics from both races "hated to see me prove myself," Parker says. But he won his employers' trust — then respect — through his savvy, enterprise and effectiveness as a steward of its daily operations. For many years after the war, he'd meet with influential parishioner Mary Darling every Saturday. He'd help make sure the church was cleaned and set up properly for its Sunday services as Mrs. Darling — known as Mollie — looked on from her special pew. He also arranged the expansive stage in the parish house for her popular Sunday school classes — moving and organizing dozens and dozens of chairs to suit her instructions. "Willie really worked with the women of the church. He was always there to set up the chairs and tables for their events," says Darling's granddaughter, Ann Tormey. "And he was always very good about thinking ahead. He was always there with the things that they needed — usually before they asked." Parker spent so much time working with the prominent grand dame that — following her death in the 1950s — the memory conjured up the only supernatural experience he's encountered in more than 70 years. "I was down in what we call 'the bottom' — and it looked like she rose from her grave," he says. "I said, 'Mrs. Darling! What are you doing here?!' And then — Bingo! She was gone." A man in charge Parker's unmatched knowledge of the church's ancient buildings and grounds — and especially his mastery of the needs of the Episcopalian liturgy — made him the natural successor when St. John's needed a new sexton in the 1970s. "I didn't believe it at first," he recalls. "But they said, 'Willie, you've been here a long time. We think you'd be the best one.' " By that time, Parker had already become an institution. Not long afterward, the congregation celebrated his 50th anniversary with a special commemoration in 1982. It also erected a bell tower cross and plaque in his honor in 2002, then held another tribute attended by 150 parishioners earlier this year. Though age has slowed him down and reduced his share of duties, he continues to open the church each day. He also has become an indispensable reservoir of knowledge and advice for every new minister, including current rector, Donna Mae Sideris. "He knows every nook and cranny of this old place. He knows where everything is put away and hidden. And he carries the history of everything this church has done for the past 75 years," she says. "So if you want to know where something is or how it's been done in the past, you ask Willie. He knows the routine. And he knows how to make sure that things are done right." Parker's proprietary attachment to the historic church has made him an outstanding watchman, too. Largely because of his vigilance, St. John's stands alone among downtown Hampton's churches — including Parker's own congregation at Queen Street Baptist Church — in keeping its doors open to the public. "He's very protective," says parishioner Bill Boyer, whose parents knew Parker as children. "And he keeps a very close eye on everybody who comes into the church." Parker also keeps an eye on the graves of his predecessors, many of whom are buried in the cemetery here. With each year that passes, his own record lengthens, he says, and he'd like to add a few more years before he's buried beside his departed wife in an outlying corner. "I planted a lot of them — and one day someone's going to plant me," he says. "But there's no one that's going to come in after me and beat my rap." complete article can be viewed at: http://www.dailypress.com/features/dp-gl_keeperofthefaith_0720jul20,0,1588123.story