This Is My Story, This Is My Song: The Thelma Parks Story

By Linda Bogue

Thelma Parkss story, written in her own words, is one of compassion and courage and steadfast faith.
Born on a sharecropping farm in Louisiana, raised by a single mom during the Great Depression along with seven brothers and sisters, Thelma learned that love begins at home. She was baptized at fifteen, and the God she chose that day began to walk with her day by day. She looked to Jesus as an everyday example of how to love and treat one another.
In her adult years, she modeled a steadfast desire to follow Jesus and His ways. Experiencing the pain of racial prejudices, discriminations, and broken relationships, Thelma Parks, a quiet black lady, discovered the power of following His way of love. Thelma found her legacy through the pain and loss she experienced and overcame through a sincere love and forgiving heart.
This Is My Story, This Is My Song: The Thelma Parks Story is filled with insights of the richness of Gods provisions and purposes. With simple yet profound words, this message of faith, love, and forgiveness can encourage and inspire.
Discover God, the source of life who offers guidance and hope in your everyday life. Listen and learn the ways of God and live a life of lasting significance!

• Language: English
• Publisher: WestBow Press
• Release date: Nov 21, 2013
• ISBN: 9781490810553

Linda Bogue

Linda Bogue, a graduate of Lipscomb University, is a Christian devoted to prayer and Bible study. She is active in international work and travel in her home church in Knoxville, Tennessee. Bogue has drawn strength and wisdom from the life of Thelma Parks during their thirty-year friendship.

Book preview

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Preface

Early Years

Working Years

Stories Along The Way

A Legacy Of Faith

A Legacy Of Wisdom

Afterword

In loving dedication to Thelma Parks’s children,

her children’s children,

and the children after them

PREFACE

Behold, God is my salvation;

I will trust, and not be afraid; for the Lord Jehovah is my strength and my song.

—Isaiah 12:2

PREFACE

In the hot summer of 1980, my husband, Grady, and I left behind family and friends in Tennessee to travel to our new home in Shreveport, Louisiana. Grady had just been appointed chancellor of Louisiana State University in Shreveport, a school of about four thousand students in the LSU System.

I was eight months pregnant and a little tearful at leaving all that was familiar. With a collie dog named Moses sleeping quietly in the backseat, we made our way across the I-40 bridge in Memphis with great anticipation of our new adventure.

Temperatures soared to 100 degrees and above every day for the first two weeks in our new Shreveport home. Our son Barrett was born a month after our arrival. Our daughter, Sara Love, was born in 1982, and another son, Michael, was born in 1984.

Because I was a very busy young mother and was expected as the chancellor’s wife to attend various university and community functions, Grady and I decided we should find a reliable and trustworthy babysitter. Sue Carroll, the administrative assistant in the chancellor’s office, suggested Thelma Parks (Miss Thelma), a quiet black lady who served in the campus mailroom.

Miss Thelma came into our family first as someone who cared for our children in the evenings when we had professional obligations. A few years later we asked Miss Thelma if she would like to travel with us on our annual vacation to Hilton Head. She happily said yes, and so began a tradition of piling all six of us into a Suburban for our annual trip to the beach. From time to time, our children would invite friends to go along and seating arrangements became more challenging, but through it all, we laughed, sang, and snacked all the way to the beach.

It was during these summer vacations, while sitting on the beach, around the pool, and at the breakfast table that Miss Thelma began to tell me her life story. Eager to learn and to remember the details, I would grab a pen and write in my journal everything she said. Desiring a more formal and deliberate attempt to remember those details, Grady and I also interviewed and recorded her oral history.

Born on a sharecrop farm in Louisiana and raised by a single mom, along with seven brothers and sisters, Miss Thelma learned that love begins at home. Her mom set the example to love and care for others. She laid the foundations of faith, family, and work in her daughter’s life.

Miss Thelma was baptized at fifteen. The God she chose that day began to walk with her day by day. She looked to Jesus for an everyday example of how to love and treat others. In her adult years, it was her faith in the God who knows and cares that sustained her. Her journey of faith and faithfulness was to be tested again and again. In disappointments and incidents of discrimination, her courage remained strong. In every relationship and in every situation, Miss Thelma’s trust in God remained steadfast. Through it all, regardless, she gave joy and understanding. Through it all, with a humble and patient heart, she gained beauty and wisdom.

Living an entire life within a few miles from where she was born and raised, Miss Thelma lived a simple work-filled life, one totally devoted to God and family. This Is My Story, This Is My Song: The Thelma Parks Story is a celebration of her life and wisdom learned on her faith journey, written in her own words.

Miss Thelma humbly expresses her desire for this book:

"I want to help somebody when they read it. I want them to feel me and know me. I want my grands to see what I went through. I didn’t do it by myself. I am pleased because I know where the Lord has brought me.

I want others to see the life that I have lived and the reason why I am here today.

If I can help somebody as I pass along… If I can show somebody he is trav’ling wrong, Then my living shall not be in vain…

If I Can Help Somebody,

A. Bazel Androzzo

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

My family

Faculty and staff, LSU-Shreveport

Members of Light Hill Baptist Church

Fran Clemmons

A special prayer of thanksgiving to God, my heavenly Father, who called me, equipped me, and guided me in telling the story of Thelma Parks’s life. I thank Him that He has given me the strength and wisdom to complete the work He chose for me.

May this work bring Him glory. In Jesus’ name.

Graphic_01.jpg

Thelma Parks as a young woman

EARLY YEARS

Yet the Lord will command his lovingkindness in the daytime, and in the night his song shall be with me, and my prayer unto the God of my life.

—Psalm 42:8

EARLY YEARS

Miss Thelma’s mom instilled values that shaped her daughter’s life and character. Life lessons were learned—not only at home, but also in her school and church life. In her young life, the seed of faith and desire to sing were planted in her heart. Stories in her early years reveal the simple but important truths she learned: to love herself, others, and God.

FAMILY AND HOME

The people who were in my life were my mom, Hattie Strory Parks, and Johnny Parks, my dad. I was born on May 30, 1927, and raised on the old Mooringsport Road.

The midwife was Miss Tilley. I was born and raised at home.

As I grew up, we lived on a farm, and my mother raised eight kids. There was Willie Mae, Sammy, Artome, James, Virnell, Thelma, Nola Mae, and Ivella Parks. I don’t know too much about my father, because he and my mother separated when my baby sister was born in 1935. That is all I could say; I don’t know anything about him. He moved and went to California, and from that day, I don’t know anything else about him.

My mom supplied for our family. She depended on nobody. If she didn’t have something, she didn’t worry about it. Everybody did not know.

At our sharecrop farm, we had to give half of what we made from the seeds, cotton, or whatever was farmed like it was for rent. In our home, we had a kitchen, a big hallway, and three bedrooms. The three youngest girls slept in one bed; the older two girls had their own beds. My three brothers slept in one bed. My mom had her own bedroom. We had chambers back in those days—little old white pots—and