Thomas Parsons:
CLASS OF 1963
Ft. Knox High SchoolClass of 1963
Ft. knox, KY
Thomas's Story
Sadly, i graduated from Walter Johnson High School in Bethesda, Md., instead of FKHS, which i had attended since 1958 (as an eighth-grader). From there to Duke U. in N.C. -- flunking out my freshman year and dropping out my sophomore year.
From N.C., I moved to Pine Bluff, Ark., to take a job as a copy editor at a daily newspaper. I spent the next 45 years in the news business, most of it in Arkansas (with brief stints in Conn. and NY). In 1984, I left the daily paper where i started my career (after working my way up to managing editor) to join the AP at Little Rock, where I stayed until retirement in 2011.
I've been married twice. The first marriage produced two great kids -- a daughter, now 40, who became a chemist, and a son, now 34, who is a computer engineer. My first (ex-)wife is now one of my best friends, here in Little Rock.
Not surprisingly to anyone who knew me back at Knox, i read a lot, and have done so since i learned to read in the 1st grade at Ft. Richardson, Alaska. I also enjoy music across a wide range of genres -- classical, pop, indy rock.
And, I think partly as a result of my upbringing, i enjoy traveling to all the places other Army brats got to go but i never did, because my father's last tw...Expand for more
o "overseas" assignments were Alaska (yes, in 1950 the Army apparently considered Alaska an "overseas" assignment) and Iran. I got to go to Alaska (and have great memories of it, bolstered by a vacation there 4 years ago), but not to Tehran -- no dependents went to Iran. So, then I get to Knox, and all my friends are just back to the states from Germany or France or England or Italy or Japan -- or their dads (career military were almost all male) got orders for Germany, Japan, England, etc. as an assignment after Knox. I have spent the past 20 years trying to make up for it.
I attended an FKHS reunion (for classes from the late '50s to early '60s) in 1989, at Fort Knox, and enjoyed it one hell of a lot -- just seeing people again that I hadn't seen in years and had never expected to see again -- Joe French, Joyce Edwards, Jan Halverson (my across-the-street neighbor at Knox), Gail McKnight (but not Jim). Patti Harkin, Terry Staimpel (but not Bob) and on and wonderfully on. And in those pre 9/11 days, we could go on post as visitors, and enjoy a visit to TAHO (sadly, by then a defunct victim of this country's poor race relations, I gather) -- and we all did.
My memories of Fort Knox are among the most pleasurable I have.
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