Brilliance Fades Away

I don’t like Mondays. Not because Bob Geldof made the phrase into a catchy tune back in the 80s, but because Monday—early Monday mornings to be specific, is when I must catch up on all the newsworthy events in our community over the past weekend and determine which of these I will write about for our local newspaper. If I am already engaged in writing an article, my editor will leave me alone and go find another of my colleagues to follow-up on his ideas for a story. He occasionally does come up with a good approach to a story, but also, he often promotes a dud to his less than enthusiastic reporting staff.

Scanning the usual local sources and social media I learned that Donald Parker- THE Donald Parker, the guy who invented the Flying Wingz and the anti-gravity generator died on Saturday evening following a short heroic battle with an aggressive cancer. Don Parker was a local boy who had put our small town on the global map. As you know, his invention of the Wingz apparatus became a world-wide sensation as a breakthrough in personal transportation, but also the many other advances created by his gravity box that made it possible for the wings to function. Often called the modern Leonardo da Vinci, his inventions have since been heralded to be as significant as the wheel and their numerous benefits to mankind.

Despite Mr. Parker’s global fame and fortune, he remained in our small town in the house he and his wife Sandra raised two kids in. He didn’t put on airs, but rather he was the same humble and polite fellow often found coaching kids in minor hockey or volunteering with the Chamber of Commerce and their projects. His new wealth allowed him to invest in our community in several important ways. He funded the acquisition of the MRI machine and the construction of the lab for it at the hospital. He bought the new Zamboni for the ice arena and funded the new backstops-- 5 of them at the softball park. Mr. Parker’s generosity also extended to creating a state of the art engineering library and several scholarships for our university; these were primarily in support of engineering and environmental studies. Don Parker has made a tremendous positive impact in our community.

I began to mentally outline my story draft following the basic 5 Ws: Who, What, Where, When and Why. Even with a project as brief as an obituary I like to know as much as I can find that is relevant to the life of the individual in question. I did a search of the newspaper’s wiki history files under Don Parker and Flying Wingz and was surprised to see the volume of materials we had in file. I saved the whole works into a common personal folder on my mobile for reading later on-- for now I was focused on gathering all the data before I was to study and understand it all. A Google search provided some unique materials I didn’t already have, such as breakthroughs his inventions had provided to others in the world.

Thinking ahead, I secured all the Parker files to a new password of my choosing. I did this to prevent others from accessing the basic ingredients to my story. My editor shared my distain for other newsies who poach background material from sources other than their own which are not in the public domain.

I needed to interview people who were close to Mr. Parker. Family and friends who could add some colour to the well-known local character many had since forgotten about in the daily rat-race. Everybody knew about the remarkable inventions he created back in the 80s. In fact, if you go to an outside window right now, you will probably see at least one person flying around wearing a pair of Mr. Parkers’ Wingz.

I found an address for Mr. Parker’s daughter Debra who lived across town with her young family. I made this a priority task and informed our group admin assistant that would be out for a couple of hours and could be reached on my mobile.

I stopped at the local corner convenience store and bought a bouquet of aromatic and colourful spring flowers and proceeded to the home of Debra Slinger.

I knocked on the door and after a few moments through the glass panes of the door I could see a shadowy figure coming near. The door opened to reveal a teenaged girl in scant summer clothes with a pair of headphones hanging around her neck and her cell phone at the ready. “Hello?” she asked softly.

I introduced myself and asked if there was someone, I could speak with about Mr. Parker’s passing. She nodded a couple times in reaction, turned her head back into the house and bellowed, “MOM! There’s a guy here about grandpa!” then she turned and walked back down the hallway.

Mom came to the door asking if she could help me. I handed her the flowers and explained why I was there and hoped she could provide me with some information about her father and his life. She said she didn’t have time now as she was busy with arrangements for her father’s funeral to be held in three days. “But you may learn some interesting things from his best friend, Tom Donnelly. He is now a resident in the Still Waters Retirement Home.” she offered.

I thanked her for the information and promised I would be in touch following the funeral later in the week. It was a short drive to the old-folks home next to the river. Entering the main reception area, I walked directly to the desk where there was a matronly lady in pastel green scrubs and a name tag that identified her as Janet. She asked if she could help me.

“I would like to speak with one of your guests, Mr. Tom Donnelly I informed her, I don’t have an appointment and I wish to speak with him about the passing of a friend of his, Donald Parker.”

“Oh yes, I heard that Donny had died, its so sad, he was such a wonderful man and would visit here with Tom from time to time. He will be missed by many.”

She checked the computer on the desktop. “Tom is scheduled to be in stretching therapy class right now, but he will be finished in about ten minutes.” she explained.

“May I wait here until then?” I asked.

“Sure, if you want, or you can head to the therapy studio- its just down the hall.” she offered trying to be helpful.

“No, I think I’ll wait here until he is finished. I don’t want to intrude.”

I sat in the waiting area and began to read some of the paper’s filed information on Mr. Parker from my mobile.

Lost in thought stimulated by reading I did not hear Mr. Donnelly approach, “You want to talk with me?” he asked straight out.

“Yes, I would like to talk with you about your late friend Donald Parker.” I said.

“Damn shame about that.” He expressed with a detectable amount of emotion in his voice. “Well, we can talk in the cafeteria if you like, I gotta eat something.”

“Would you like to go out for lunch with me? Anyplace you’d like as long as its quiet and we don’t have to shout at each other.”

“Sure! We could do that. Give me a few minutes, I must put on some outside clothes and grab my phone--It’s a rule for leaving this place. Alright?”

I agreed and resumed my reading while waiting for him to return.

I watched him shuffling back down the hall to the reception area. He stopped at the desk and told the attendant he was going out for lunch with me, as he pointed in my direction.

“Good to go.” he said approaching me dressed in different apparel and now he carried a traditional wooden cane.

Getting in my car, I asked if he had a preferred spot, where he would like to have lunch.

“How about the True North Hotel?” he suggested. “Donny and I emptied a few bottles in there over the years.”

“Good choice, but its now called the Gold Dust Hotel, under new ownership,” I explained. We were there in under ten minutes. I stuffed a few bucks into the parking meter, and we entered the hotel. “Restaurant or the bar?” I asked.

“The bar!” he answered quickly. “If we’re to be talking about Don, I’ll be raising a glass or two to him.”

We found a table away from the noise-making machinery of the drinking establishment and sat down.

A young woman well covered in tattoos arrived with a drink tray and a couple menus. “Today’s specials are: Potato soup with a BLT; a shrimp salad or the bison burger platter.”

We made our order with a couple pints of a local craft lager to wash it all down.

Our eyes met and I suspect he was wondering what kind of questions I would be asking him. “So, what do you want to know?” he all but whispered.

Years of interviewing people who may have an emotional attachment to the issue has taught me to go slow and always be respectful regardless of what may be said about the topic.

“Mr. Donnelly, I do not wish to pry into your relationship with your friend Mr. Parker. I want to write a spotlight piece on his life leading up to his discoveries and the subsequent development of the Wingz company that has changed our world in so many ways. He was a significant scientist in our modern world, and I want my readers to know more about what kind of man he was. Everybody knows about his inventions, but few know about the inventor.”

Tattoo gal brought our drinks and placed them on the table. “Please call me Tom.” He said as he lifted the frosty glass stein. “Here’s to my dear friend Donny Parker. May he rest in peace and be surrounded by big-boobed angels for all eternity.” I raised my glass and we drank the toast together.

“Donny was a sucker for a nice pair of boobs.” He explained and somehow that was the icebreaker that we had to get past to converse in a more relaxed manner.

“So how do you want to do this?” Tom asked looking me in the eyes.

“To be honest I don’t know enough about the man to even know what questions to ask. How about you start telling me about him and we’ll take it from there? How you met, things you did together, what he liked and didn’t, what drove him to invent and things like that?”

“Okay I guess, I was thinking about some of this yesterday when I learned that he had gone.” He looked past me off into the distance and softly began: “I last spoke with Donny a day before he died. I went to visit him in the hospital with a mickey of scotch so we could have a final drink together. Turns out that was also the last time we would speak to each other.” His voice began to falter as his emotions intruded into his conversation.

“We spoke of days gone by and some highlights of our fishing trips together as we slowly sipped the whiskey until Donny began to cough which caused a nurse to come in and put a halt to our small private party. She gave me shit for bringing in the booze and promptly seized it off the little wheeled cart next to the bed.”

A gentle smile formed on his face as I watched him recall that visit just a few days earlier.

“He knew his time was up and was doing his best to remain positive despite the pain he was suffering. I asked if there was anything he wanted me to do for him to which he answered that his team of lawyers had everything in hand but thanks for just being here. We both broke down around then and I leaned in to hug him on his bed, his body covered in wires and stuff connected to machines with blinking lights and monitoring screens.”

“I could tell he was tired as his eye lids began to droop, but I did not want to leave him knowing that I would probably never be able to speak with him again. He must have sensed this and boldly told me to "GO! Before we started whimpering like schoolgirls.” A tear slid down Tom’s right cheek as he continued his recollection of his farewell visit with his closest friend.

“I stood up and said, I love you Donny, and he replied that he loved me too and we would meet on the other side,” He then said, “I wonder what the fishing is like in the great beyond?”

“I was going to break down again so I took his hand and leaned in for a final hug, then with tears running down my face I left his hospital room, never to return as he passed the next day.”

Tom had thought quite a bit about his friend over the last day and he told me anecdotes of Don and his many research projects all through the lunch after it arrived and two more beers before we noticed the time. We had been talking for nearly three hours and I don’t think we covered very much of what was Mr. Parker’s interesting life. I had 9 pages of my steno pad filled with notes about Mr. Parker.

One story that stood out for me was when Tom told of the first test flight of the Wingz prototype; he was there assisting Don as he was often asked to do. Tom would serve as a witness to the experiments, take video and still images to record these events; and to be on hand for safety reasons in case things went wrong.

“Don called me one Saturday morning asking if I could lend a hand with one of his experiments. I agreed and he came by to pick me up about 20 minutes later. We drove out to Pilot Mountain, that’s out by the old monorail station north of town. The phone company had a road that accessed the top of the mountain as they had a microwave site up at the top, where we parked.

“It was a nice warm spring day which prompted Don to mumble to himself about thermals and wind shear. He opened the back of his pick-up and pulled out the wings he wanted to test that day. They were not like the light-weight modern Wingz the kids have today with the neural interface and automatic safety gizmos. These were about 3 feet in length on each side and the surface controls were mechanical with finger activated instruments on each hand. The gravity pack was also much different from the ones in use today. You’d call the early gear he made primitive compared to today’s models.

“The gravity pack was about as large as a common pie pan with a small control panel on the topside edge allowing him to read the gauges while it was strapped to his chest, with adjustments for the flight surfaces made by the controls at his fingertips. Once he was all strapped in, he again went through his checklist as he adjusted the apparatus and performed little tests like bouncing on his toes to calibrate the gravity thresholds.

“I could tell he was nervous as he kept running through his checklist while mumbling to himself as he tweaked his apparatus over and over.”

“I went to the pickup to get the video camera to record today’s test. It’s the same footage used for all the documentaries about the invention. Its been seen millions of times and not once have I received a credit for taking it…oh well.”

The video segment Tom shot that day is the one most people are familiar with as it was the featured documentation that was used to confirm the invention on the nightly news programs around the planet 36 years ago.

“Once he felt confident in his adjustments and calibrations, he checked the wind direction and force once again. He spread his arms, fidgeted with the controls and he slowly began to rise into the air a short distance from where he conducted some further adjustments. As he lifted ever so slowly, he looked at me and his eyes were as big as saucers to match the smile he had on.” Tom was grinning as he told me this story. His face reflecting the joy of his memory.

“He slowly began some maneuvers to test his ability to turn and feel the effect of the breeze that was blowing out of the north. He was about 20 feet in the air and moved to the south away from the mountainside which made him much higher as the ground dropped away beneath him. Gaining confidence, Don flew to the west a few hundred yards and then made a long sweeping arch back to where he started from and landed a bit harder than he had planned to do.”

“He shut it off and began to remove the wings and the gravity pack. Saying he had to pee.” Tom explained. “That first flight lasted exactly 12 minutes – I know, I timed him.”

Don attended to Nature’s call and returned eager to go up again but had to check his device first to confirm there were no issues resulting from the first real flight test. “He asked if I would like to give it a try.” Tom smirked, “I said not a God-damned chance, and to this day I have never flown on Donny’s wings.”

After we finished our lunch and beers, we decided it was time to leave and I suggested we visit the local museum where they had an exhibit on Don Parker complete with his original prototype Wingz. It was displayed in a ‘Local boy Makes Good’ theme complete with pictures of him in his workshop and family photos. Other pictures showed him standing next to politicians and other global notables who wanted desperately to be seen as pals with this brilliant inventor. There was also a picture of Don and Tom standing next to a river with fishing rods in hand. Tom wiped his nose with a handkerchief from his pocket. He sniffed a couple times and I could see the trace of another tear running down his cheek.

“We used to go fishing together often. That is before he got all famous and was not at home very much.” Tom said quietly. “His life changed quite a bit after his discovery was announced and he set about building his company and all. As a result, we didn’t go fishing as much- That is until he got tired of all the celebrity attention and came home to hide from it all.”

“His wife Sandra was also fed-up with all the attention she was getting being married to the brilliant inventor. However, she had no problem with the fortune that followed once all the patent and licencing headaches were behind them. They didn’t let the money be too much of an influence in their lives, but it was hard to ignore. As you know they did a tremendous amount for the city and a bunch of charities. They invested in their kids’ education and both Donny and Debby attended university in pursuit of degrees. Deb became a chemical engineer until she married and had kids. Donny went into avionics which pleased his dad to no end.” Tom was trying hard to hold back his emotions as he spoke of the Parker family he knew so well.

“Sandra died of kidney problems in 96 which put Donny into a long period of depression…” He walked a short distance away to gather himself, I could hear him blowing his nose, so I found something else to look at until he returned to stand next to me once again.

“Sorry about that, my wife Marilyn died in a car accident a few months after Sandra passed, so that put an end to our regular card games, barbeques and many other things we would do together as couples. Donny and I tried to support each other as best we could and I’m certain it helped me, and this mutual grieving brought us even closer together as friends.” He said while struggling to maintain his emotions.

Sensing I had taken too much of this gentleman’s time for one day, I asked if he could steer me towards anybody else I should speak with to learn more about Don Parker and his remarkable inventions.

“Steve Wilson was a local welder who built things for Donny. He could tell you more, but he died a couple years ago. Donny and I gave Steve a great send off after the family funeral service was over. You should talk with Don’s kids, they were very close, especially when they were attending university. He was so proud of them and would do whatever he could to help them in their studies, perhaps too much sometimes.

“Denise once asked me how to nicely get her dad to give her some space and not get so involved with her schoolwork.”

Back in my car, I informed, “I had planned on speaking with the family following Mr. Parker’s funeral service as I expect they will all be there. Or would I be too forward speaking with them before then? I spoke with Debra briefly this morning- - she suggested I talk with you.”

Tom smirked and said, “And the circle is complete,

“Tell you what, how about I as an interested close friend get together the required family members to offer help with any remaining loose ends leading up to Donny’s service? I’m going to do it anyway; you would be welcomed to come along I’m pretty sure.”

I sensed the alarm softly buzzing in the back of my mind. You’re just researching a story, don’t get too involved.

“I don’t want to be any bother to you or the family.” I said with as much sincerity I could muster while trying to supress a huge beer burp.

“Then don’t come,” He said dryly. “But I doubt you’ll get a better opportunity for the quiet, no distractions kind of chats you like to have.”

He was right of course. Seldom do I get a break like this. The story credibility would be enhanced tremendously with the participation of the family.

“Okay. Thank you, it will be a great help in telling Mr. Parker’s story, and that’s what my job is.”

This was becoming much more than a few column inches obituary story. Time to re-evaluate the opportunity and the possible outcomes.

Donald Parker deserved to have the bright lights shining on him and his profound impact on our world’s future. He was one of the greatest inventors of the last century. Personal transportation was transformed once all the safety issues were fixed and people could then fly like birds. The recent introduction of Stunt Flying as a competition in the Summer Olympics has made the sport extremely popular. Military uses--well I choose to remember the benefit for all the field medical crews in attending the wounded rather than how easy the Wingz made it to wound or kill others. Construction and emergency applications of all kinds employ Wingz, from windmill repair to firefighting they have added a new level of safety and efficiency to many dangerous and difficult jobs.

Of course, several new laws were created to marshal the safe and polite use of the Wingz. The helmet law was a gimme, but the controversy surrounding spying and invasions of privacy as you may recall created a long-protracted argument about personal rights and what you could not do while wearing a pair of wings. Why do assholes believe they have a right to be assholes?

Mr. Parker’s gravity pack alone has made moving a piano as easy as lifting a loaf of bread. The many innovative adaptations that were created for the physically impaired gave new life to those with mobility challenges. Don Parker’s inventions have forever changed the evolution of humans on this planet. His is a terrific story, especially when you add up all the ways others have applied his inventions to enhance our quality of life in so many diverse ways.

So much information to include in an obit, perhaps I should be thinking of writing a feature format, but even then, 6000 words -- even the very best words would not do justice to Donald Parker’s well-earned place in history.

I pondered this for a few hours and decided that when I met with the family, I would ask for permission to write Donald Parker’s biography, he deserves nothing less.

So that’s how I was motivated to write Mr. Parker’s biography, now here we are fourteen months later, and Donald Parker’s biography has been on the New York Times best seller list for the past six weeks. My publisher reports agents have called a few times wanting to buy the rights of the book to produce a feature length movie about Don Parker’s inventions and this important time in history.

This is not my decision alone. The Parker family will determine how we move forward in telling Donny’s story. Since I began this project, I have come to know the Parker family and Tom Donnelly quite well. In this time I have come to the realization that this is not my story to tell, but rather I just gathered the information together from a variety of sources, organized it into a narrative and got it published for all to read, understand and enjoy.

But I am being lured further in with invitations to appear on television programs to talk about my book which means sharing more about the Parker family and frankly I don’t think it is my place to speak on their behalf. Perhaps someone in the family would be better suited to speak about Don Parker and his remarkable discoveries.

During my research I did stumble over an interesting story about the numerous red tape challenges related to Mr. Parker acquiring the many patent approvals for his gravity box and Wingz. I think that will be my next book- an expose’ on power and control and who wields it in our modern technology world… and who decides who wins and who doesn’t.