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I know
what you're thinking... "His family? Isn't this whole website about
his family??" Well, yes, but this section is about my immediate family, the Parkhursts.
My father and mother, Loren Bernard Parkhurst
and Sarah Bournazian, married in New York in 1947. My dad was
from Oklahoma City and my mom from Boston, Massachusetts. They
met in Boston where my dad was stationed in the US
Navy.
 My family has lived in quite a
number of places in the US over the years. My brother Loren,
Jr., and sister Alice Marie were both born in Boston. My
sister Cathy was born in Oklahoma. And I, the baby of the
family, was born in Portsmouth, Virginia, at the Portsmouth Naval
Hospital. The family has also lived in Tennessee
and Rhode Island. All of us have wound up in California,
where my dad was last stationed during his final years in the
Navy.
My dad was
born in Oklahoma City in 1924. He received his name from the
two sides of his family. His first name, Loren, was derived from
"Loven", his grandfather's middle name and a family name of the Prichard and Leach families, from whom
he descended. His middle name, Bernard, was in honor of the Bernard du Montier family, Creole
settlers of Louisiana from France.
My dad was a Navy man all of his life.
He joined when he was only 17 years old at the onset of World War
II. A few months after his 18th birthday, his first ship, an
oiler named the USS Neosho, was hit by Japanese torpedoes and sunk
in the Battle of Coral Sea.
He
married briefly to Belle
Termine in the early 1940's and had a son, my half-brother, Jeffrey Louis Parkhurst
, in 1945. In 1947, he wed my mother, Sarah
Bournazian, to whom he was married for 44 years. In 1948, he
left the Navy temporarily and worked at a variety of jobs, including
an inspecting engineer for the State of Oklahoma, a boiler
inspector for an insurance company, and an engineer at a government
power plant. Around 1960, he rejoined the US Navy and was
in several engaements in the Vietnam War. He travelled around
the world, in the Mediterranean, East Asia, and Europe, and attained
the rank of Boiler Technician Chief in 1968.
He retired from the Navy in 1972 and worked
for the State of California until 1987. My father passed away
in March of 1991 after years of suffering from
emphysema.
My mom was born in 1925 to an Armenian
immigrant family in Boston, Massachusetts. Her parents had
survived the holocaust of the Armenians by the Ottoman Turks in 1915
and had fled to the US. She grew up speaking only Armenian
and didn't learn English until she started elementary
school.
During
the Depression, her family lived at the home of her uncle, Boghos Halajian
, whom all of the children called
simply "Keri". After high school in 1942,
she graduated from the Burroughs School and received an
operators license for a variety of business machines (precursor of
today's computers). Her first jobs included bookkeeping and
payroll for a hardware and electrical supply
store, General Heat and Appliance, Foxboro Harness Racing
Track, and the Christian Children's Fund.
After she and my dad married, my mom
concentrated on raising her family (and a wonderful job she did,
too, if I do say so myself). She went back to school in 1972
and studied early childhood development. She has also
done volunteer work for a variety of organizations, including
kindergarten assistant, Sunday school teacher, Navy Wives
Club of America, Fleet Reserve Association, and the Catholic
Daughters.
Alice
Marie is the oldest of my full siblings, being 14 years older than
yours truly. She married Mark Leslie Miller in 1969 (I was
the ring-bearer at the wedding) and has three sons: Christopher Mark Miller, Matthew Mark Miller, and Gregory Mark Miller. She's
a graduate of the University of California at San Diego. Alice
Marie currently works for the Board of Education and has been
instrumental in the formation of at least two California charter
schools. She's often quoted in newspaper articles on the
charter school system and has appeared more than once on television
news broadcasts. The
Millers have
lived in Massachusetts and Texas and currently reside in San
Carlos, California.
My big
brother, Loren, 13 years my senior, was my idol growing
up. He joined the US Army when he was 19 and served in
Thailand during the Vietnam War. He studied electronics
while in the Army and later worked for Signetics Corporation in
Santa Clara, California. He married Susan Williamson in 1983 and has
two daughters, Sarah Jeanine
Parkhurst and Patricia
Michelle Parkhurst. He is currently single and owns a
network administration company, MicroLAN Consultants
, performing maintanance, wiring, and
technical services for computer networks all over the San Francisco
Bay Area.
My
sister Cathy is the closest to me in age, being only 10 years older
than me (when I said I was the baby of the family, I really meant I
was the baby of the family!). In 1975, she married Tony Barrozo, a really great guy
who grew up in very, very sunny Blythe, California. Cathy
and Tony have lived in Blythe, San Diego, San Juan Capistrano,
Mission Viejo, and currently live in Murietta between Riverside and
San Diego. They have two children, Jessica Loren Barrozo and Robert Daniel Barrozo
. Cathy was a manager for Denny's restaurants for a
number of years and is currently working as a GIS analyst for the
City of Lake Elsinore, doing demographic research, design, and
mapping for small businesses throughout the Inland Empire region of
Southern California.
I realized that I had had this website up for three years
and didn't include a blurb about me! I'm the baby of the family, being 10 years
younger than Cathy. I have a whole page about myself on this website, so if you
want to know more, just click here!
I unfortunately never met my brother Jeff
until only about 10 years ago, but I wish I had know him long before
that. He's a really great guy and there's definitely much of
our father in him. Jeff was born and raised in Brooklyn, New
York, by his mother Belle. He married young and actually has a
son (my nephew) who's older than I am! Jeff works in
high-voltage power systems and currently lives in Elizaville, in
upstate New York. I've very proud to have Jeff as a
brother.
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