Fred Geary--Swept Up By The Revival: ray parkins

"My father, Ray F. Parkins, knew Fred Geary of Carrollton," recounts Julia Murray of Overland Park, Kansas, RIGHT. She talks about her father, her Carrollton relatives, her parents, Fred Geary, and her background. Double click on images to enlarge.

"I have checked out your blog about Fred Geary. My connection with him is that he and my father grew up in Carrollton and of course went to the same high school. They both did art work for the school annual. After graduation they each went their separate ways." Julia Ellen Parkins Murray

"Mary (Parkins) Magee was my aunt. She was the middle Parkins child. The sister with 3 older Parkins boys and 3 younger Parkins boys.

The 3 older ones stayed in Carrollton for the most part -- Bill, Charlie and Sam. The 3 younger ones went on to college. Harry, Ray and Hugh." Julia Ellen Parkins Murray

Pen and ink illustrations by Ray F. Parkins.

Double click to see images enlarged.

"Parkins and Geary's illustrations are everywhere in my edition of the 1914 Nautilus yearbook. The book is worn with pages falling apart. A man who grew up in Carrollton gave me this book recently. His name is John R. Jackson of Odessa, Missouri." Karl Marxhausen

"Small world that someone would bring in a Nautilus to you! I gave all of mine to the Missouri Historic Society and every now and then I wished I still had them." Julia Ellen Parkins Murray

"My father was athletic. I believe he was quarterback for Carrollton's football team. He went on to Warrensburg State Teachers College where he and some other students lived and boarded in the Forrest (Phog) Allen home. The fellows were p.e. majors and several, including my father, went on to coach sports around the country. " Julia Ellen Parkins Murray

Read "The Quitter" by Ray Parkins, from pages 43 and 44 of the 1914 Nautilus, BELOW.

"My friend CB Magee tells me her mother-in-law was Mary (Parkins) Magee. She knew the Parkins brothers and

they were fun to be around when they all got together. She said she had seen some of Ray's art once. She said all the brothers are planted in a row at the cemetery. She was divorced from a Magee." Karl Marxhausen

"You are a friend to Clara Beth Magee. She was married to Jack, and they produced 2 sons. She was a Roseberry and her mother had the drugstore there, as I remember it." Julia Ellen Parkins Murray

    "My dad married my mother who had graduated from Chillicothe Business College and had come to Carrollton to seek her fortune. She roomed in her sister May Melton's home. Aunt May's son Raymond grew up to marry and live in Carrollton all his life--post office, fire department.
     "The newly married couple stayed for 6 months while

my dad became principal of the high school. He then got a position as a coach in a Minnesota high school coaching all sports--finally focusing on coaching basketball. He was a terrific coach and had many winning seasons."
     "I only learned last year with college records that my cousin Jack sent me -- that my dad actually majored in history -- it seemed to be a passion with him but I never knew. One time he helped me with my history homework in 7th grade and made it come alive. I thought then if only my teacher could do that." Julia Ellen Parkins Murray
    "The Chillicothe reference is interesting too. I tried to get my mother's school records from the business college but never got anywhere with finding records. I was curious about what she did study. I am impressed learning about my parents' lives before I was existed. She ended up being a clerk in a dry goods store in Carrollton. Women didn't work after marriage so that was that." Julia Ellen Parkins Murray

"What year was my dad principal? Let me look up the exact marriage date. They were married Nov 13, 1920. They had eloped and announced their marriage that Christmas and he was principal of the high school at that time. I have the delightful quaint clippings from the paper about the wedding --headline "HIGH SCHOOL PRINCIPAL KEPT WEDDING SECRET". I think he spent that year (1920-21) as the principal, then going on to the coaching job in Duluth for a short time, then to Minneapolis for the rest of his career. It was the only high school building in Carrollton that I knew of." Julia Ellen Parkins Murray

     "My dad would have LOVED March Madness! In Minneapolis during high school playoffs it was kind of like March Madness. The media pace was slower back then, and basically the newspaper was the big source of news and so the newspapers filled the sports pages with articles on the coaches of the teams, and perhaps a special player on each team and detailed reports on the games.
     "My dad was involved in the ruling that when a ball went out of bounds, the two teams would no longer have to have a tip off but instead the referee would throw the ball in to the receiving player. Think how plodding it was to constantly have to have a jump ball to resume playing!"
    "One time I asked my dad why he hadn't become an artist and he said it was because you can't support a family as an artist."

Carrollton High School building in 1914, ABOVE.

Geary's student signature, BELOW.

Pen and ink illustrations by Fred Geary

from 1914 Nautilus NEXT, and his selection
"The Pilgrims of New England" from page 41.

"I first learned about you through your interest in Fred Geary. You have a lot of information about him on your blog about him. He is a bit mysterious in that there is not that much about him out there and you have quite a bit of it."

"I was researching him (Geary) for a report recently and found him in the1930 census, when he was living in Kansas City and is shown as age 34, and married --at age 34. Didn't think he was ever married. He is so difficult to find in online records. I believe someone in Carrollton told me that he was mentoring a young woman in Carrollton and folks thought he might marry her but never did." Julia Ellen Parkins Murray

"My report was informal and called attention to Fred Geary's art work for the Fred Harvey organization. It was for a reading group and we had read the book: Appetite for America by Stephen Fried -- a biography of Fred Harvey. I pointed out that Fred Geary was not mentioned at all in the book and he played a definite part in the Fred Harvey expansion of tourism in the west. I thought he deserved a mention." Julia Ellen Parkins Murray

"I did show them the book of his woodcuts from the historical society. I was disappointed the prints were so dark that quite a bit of detail was lost. I complained politely to the society and the response was that that was the quality of the prints furnished to them to use and she too seemed sorry they were so dark." Julia Ellen Parkins Murray

"My family lived in Minneapolis until I was twelve. My mother was in a wheelchair from Parkinson's Disease, an aftermath of encephalitis a few year's earlier. She was requiring more care."

"My father died, and my mother and I came down to Kansas City, where her two sisters, one in Kansas City and one in Rayville MO, set about taking care of her but soon found she needed to be in a nursing home. The oldest sister, May Melton, lived with her daughter and her son-in-law at 38th and Walnut, and they took me into their household, where I had an enjoyable family life. It was a wonderful solution for me after the sadness of my father's death. I visited the Parkins side of the family often during those years, often spending a summer visit with Aunt Mary. Visits in Carrollton gave me a taste of the small town life as opposed to the big cities I had lived in otherwise. Every one knew each other in Carrollton."

"It was easy to attend junior college and quite affordable but getting the last two years were out of the question. I did not plan to continue. The head of the nursing home determined I should finish college and connected me with the Volker Foundation, which helped me with the last two years at Kansas City University -- KCU we called it. It is UMKC now. Talk about helping angels everywhere. I look back in amazement at them."

"After that was marriage to my husband, who was attending KCU on the GI bill. Then I decided to teach school. So it was back to college at KU extension classes. I taught one year of 1st/2nd grade in KCMO, then I stayed home with family of 3. Still later, I went back to KU extension to get certified to teach gifted students and taught about 10 years in KCK gifted ed." Julia Ellen Parkins Murray

"It is funny that you should mention Wilbur Phillips. I just ran across his name in one of your blogs yesterday and thought I know something about him --but what? It was connected with my husband's job with Kansas City maintenance of buildings--repairs, painting. We just talked about it this morning. He (my husband, Truman Murray) feels that Wilbur Phillips was for a short time the acting director of the Kansas City Museum. My husband met him through the maintenance of that building. I seemed to remember that Wilbur was involved in painting the backgrounds for the natural history displays in the museum. And I think Phillips was a classmate of my cousin Raymond Melton at Carrollton High School. I wonder what happened to him.