Parker grew up in Vidalia. He and his friend Mark Miller
graduated from Vidalia High School in 1976. Mark Dorsey,
Parker’s neighbor, was one year behind them. For as long as
either of them could remember, they were following Parker
to some river.
After high school, Parker enlisted in the Army and
spent some time in Germany. When his four years of service
ended, he came home long enough to pack a few things
and head to Nantahala, North Carolina. “He just took off
and left everything to work as a river guide for a year,”
said Mark Miller. “He lived with the other guides at the
Nantahala Outdoor Center. The job paid next to nothing.”
But everything he needed was right there on the river.
After a summer working as a river guide, Parker
returned to Vidalia and eventually went to work with
Georgia Power in transmission construction. “We had
been dating about four years,” said Judy Waller. “He was
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working near Lake Hartwell in October 1992 and had asked
me to come up to visit one weekend. When I got there, he
asked me what I wanted to do that weekend. I suggested
we drive over to North Carolina to the Nantahala Outdoor
Center. He showed me a ring and said, ‘I thought we could
get married.’ I immediately said, ‘Yes!’ We got married in
Walhalla, South Carolina on October 31, 1992. On April 6,
1999, we were blessed with our beautiful daughter, Jenny
Brooke. Now 21 years old, she has grown up loving the river
just like her father.”
Judy understood she would share Parker, not only with
the river but the “river people” who were as much his family
as kin. “In the spring of 2012, I noticed that Parker had
begun forgetting and losing things,” she said. “I even made
him an appointment with our doctor, Dr. Geoffrey Conner,
with whom Parker had grown up. Dr. Conner referred him
to a neurologist in Savannah as the symptoms continued