Jason Pioneers, led by jumper George Parks, win state track title in 1964
Two athletic older guys sit facing each other in a McDonald's booth in South Bethany Beach on a January Wednesday morning in 2012. An old scrapbook stuffed with yellowed newspaper sports clippings, black-and-white photos and brittle old athletic programs is opened on the table. The men mirror a sliver of American history each was born into.
Both graduated from high school in 1964. One attended a rural school in Georgetown named William C. Jason Comprehensive High School. In effect, it was a colored charter school established in 1950. William Jason was the first president of Delaware State College in 1895 and held that position for 28 years.
The other man attended a Catholic school in Levittown, Pa., that was 100 percent white. Both schools are gone now, but the men remain. Both remember the America with Martin Luther King Jr. and the one after his assassination in 1968. The upcoming three-day MLK weekend was part of the context of what was primarily an interview of George Parks about school, sports and a segregated society.
That is how I came to meet Parks, clad in his bright-green Jason jacket, class of 1964. I was there for his story of the 1964 state championship Jason track team that upset Tower Hill for the Group 2 Delaware state track championships.
Claude McCrea ran lead-off on the relay team and Parks was the anchor. Mervin Holder, now deceased, won the state title in the discus with a throw of 131-feet-3-inches.
Estelle Parker Selby and Delema Lott were cheerleaders.
“I jumped 22-feet-2-inches to win the broad jump, and we ended up shocking everyone by winning the meet,” Parks said. The Pioneers scored 57 to the Hillers' 48. Jason would come back and win the state title again in 1967, beating Tower Hill 71-61. Indian River teacher and baseball coach Howard Smack won the javelin throw in that meet with a respectable throw of 178-feet-8.
“I was undefeated for three years, and each year I bettered my record,” Parks said. 'We didn't play any white schools. In Delaware there was William Henry in Dover, Reading in Middletown and Howard in Wilmington. They were our rivals. We also traveled to Maryland for games against Salisbury High and Cambridge. The entire student body of Jason, we were a close group. We still have a reunion every two years.”
Parks is a humble person, repeatedly saying he had his time and is uncomfortable talking about himself. He was also a star in football and basketball and was voted Jason's outstanding athlete in the class of 1964.
Two of Parks' younger brothers, Norman and George Empty, were football stars at Indian River, and both played in the Blue/Gold All-Star game.
Parks went into the Army after graduation from high school, serving from 1965 to 1967 and somehow avoiding Vietnam. He served in Seoul, South Korea, where he was an engineer supply clerk. He played on the post football team. He said after attending a segregated high school, he went right into an integrated Army. “The Army don't play that mess,” Parks said.
Parks said his focus and that of most of his friends was in making themselves the best they could be, and he wanted the same rights as whites.
“I liked sitting in the balcony at the John M. Clayton Theater, but I wanted it to be my choice,” Parks said.
Parks also mentioned Waynne Paskins being a cheerleader and Janie Miller as Homecoming Queen in 1967.
“I never bring up what I did. I let people who know me bring it up, so everybody knows I ain't bragging,” Parks said.
"Everything I did, I did for Jason,” Parks said. “The outside world in terms of halls of fame and stuff like that I could care less about. But I'm willing to do anything for the legacy of my high school."
Parks said, "All the racial stuff that was going around, we was aware of it, but we was having such a good time in our own little world, we just wanted to be equal and not get hand-me-down books from other schools. Just to have the freedom to do what the white folks did.”
Parks and what he describes as his "boys from Jason track team” still get together each year and go to the Penn Relays.
Parks exited the interview. He is in shape, walks a few times a week and joked, ”I suffer from all the black diseases, high blood pressure and diabetes, you name it.”
I threw in my titanium hip to stay in the conversation and walked away with George's precious scrapbook, which I promised to return to a Jason cheerleader named Delema when I was finished.
Two old sports dogs rode home, one north, the other south, both with the window down feeling better about themselves, one for telling his story and the other for recording it. Instant friends through sports. Martin Luther King would be smiling.
