| Sources |
- [S104] Cocke County, Tennessee, and its People, Cocke County Heritage Book Committee, (Walsworth Publishing, 1992), 193.
- [S24] The Newport Plain Talk, (http://www.newportplaintalk.com), 9 May 2014.
Mother’s Day: time to remember, of wars and happy times past
(c)2014 NPT PHOTO BY DAVID POPIEL
Brother and sister, Elizabeth Henry and D. Quinton Parrott, the children
of the late Earl Cecil “Polly” Parrott, who married the former Gladys
Audrey Poe. The children have lived in Newport more than most people
have been alive, as he was born in 1923. Mary Elizabeth and her (much older)
brother have been siblings for over 80 years. This photo was taken during
April at her home off Cliffwood, where she lives with husband, retired optometrist
Dr. Bill Henry.
Author: David Popiel
We will be celebrating Mother’s Day this weekend and either sitting down for a meal with Mom or placing flowers at a grave in and around our hometown on what is supposed to be a rainy weekend after temperatures embraced the high 80s last week, giving us a taste of summer to come.
On Saturday, April 26, I drove over to Quinton and Bill Parrott’s home off College Avenue and transported the couple to the Cliffwood Drive home of Dr. Bill and Elizabeth Henry. I wanted to get brother and sister, Quinton and Mary Elizabeth, together for a photo, and we made several to share with you. Before we started talking, she wanted to show me some artwork by David Freeman since we had been talking with him. And she had a surprise sketch to show. Freeman had done an intricate large and long vine etched into the glass windows of a large west side room. She also had paintings of his. What really caught my eye, since we had been talking about the Hill Topper apartments off Mims Avenue, was a sketch Elizabeth has had since the 1980s. This was of the Victorian house when the giant tree was still alive in the front yard. Dorothy Hauser had done the sketch from which she produced prints to sell.
I was able to review with Elizabeth some of her recollections of growing up in Newport, particularly in a large house located where the current Newport Federal branch bank sits off Cosby Highway. The photos show Quinton in Navy uniform so it was made during the 1940s. But she was born at what was the Ernest Ottinger home off Jones Hill and is 10 years younger than Quinton. By the time the war was over, the Parrotts had moved to Lincoln Avenue. She attended the University of Tennessee from 1951 thru 1953. I asked her to also review how she met Bill, who, incidentally, was living with his family at their home where the Newport Community Center is located. This meant that they were about a block apart but did not know each other. Bill remembers exactly the summer of 1949, hanging out at Nelson Bales Drug Store with friends, when Elizabeth came out the door. Bill found out who she was and added, “I know what I’m going to do all summer.” They courted and were married in Jan. 1953. Like many young men from Newport at the start of the Korean War, Bill entered the Army and was at Ft. Jackson where he got a three-day pass to marry Elizabeth. Bill served until 1956, doing artillery training in Oklahoma. Now, Elizabeth stayed in Newport and worked for less than a year at A.C. Lawrence Leather Company in the office. Then she went west to join Bill. After service they returned to Tenn. and for a time he worked as an industrial engineer at Enka about 1956 until 1958. Then Bill entered the college of optometry at Memphis graduated and joined Dr. Nathan Ford in practice at their office across from the old Merchants & Planters Bank.
We talked some about their Cliffwood neighbors, including Dr. Kurt Steel, also an optometrist and partner with Dr. Jeff Foster. For those who may not know, Jeff got his start in optometry and learned much from Doctors Ford and Henry before he ultimately went out on his own. The Henry home was not new when they moved in about 1976, as it was built years earlier by Ron Ison who was an executive with then National Bank of Newport. Elizabeth also reminded me that her father, Polly Parrott, was also sheriff of Cocke County from 1956 until 1958 and Fred Dover was chief deputy.
I asked her to comment on the biggest changes and what has not changed. “The biggest change I’ve seen in our hometown from my youth to present day is the commercial growth on Cosby Highway. The construction of the many shopping centers is also a big change.” Some of the landscape seems unchanging such as the American Legion’s Memorial Building, the Masonic Hall, and Cocke County Courthouse. “We took such pride in our Newport Grammar School and City Park in the forties. We still do. The old part of the grammar school is the same as it was when I started attending in 1939. Newport was and is a good place to call home.”
WW II detours lives
The Parrotts had been in Newport a couple of decades before World War II disrupted the world. The jobs situation in the 1930s, The Great Depression, must have been difficult but this was offset by a strong farming community. Quinton’s father, Polly Parrott, however, was a city man and before he became his own boss he did a stint at C.E. McNabb’s on East Broadway. Wouldn’t you love to see a list of all the people who worked there over the decades? Elizabeth was born in 1933 and, as Quinton recalls, “We were living on Jone’s Hill, in the Ernest Ottinger rental home.” Shortly afterwards, Polly and Gene Gray opened the Gray-Parrott service station. And by the time Quinton entered high school the Parrotts were living off Old Cosby Highway in a home owned by Kelly Caton. Later, Mr. Parrott bought the home and so the service station business must have been making money. Young Parrott was in high school when the US entered World War II in Dec. 1941. He graduated in 1943 and was drafted by June that year along with many of his schoolmates. They left for Ft. Oglethorpe on a bus carrying around 30 young men including Quinton’s friends Everett, Gerald, and Leroy Ramsey. “We got too rowdy and by Sweetwater they stopped the bus and called the police.” Those who were drunk went to jail and the rest continued to the Army base. “We had a choice” of service branches and Quinton figured the Navy would be “dry with hot meals. We all joined the Navy and went to Chattanooga.” The next stop was Banebridge, Maryland, on the Chesapeake Bay. “There was a 14-foot fence around the base and it looked like a prison.” Quinton was one of the few from the group who passed the Navy tests and from here was shipped to Ft. Pierce, Florida, to be assigned to a huge troop carrier called an LST, specifically LST 503 for amphibious landing training as the US and allies were planning to invade German-held Europe.
- [S112] Census, 1940.
Name: Mary Elizebeth Parrott
Titles and Terms:
Event Type: Census
Event Date: 1940
Event Place: Civil District 6, Cocke, Tennessee, United States
Gender: Female
Age: 6
Marital Status: Single
Race (Original): White
Race: White
Relationship to Head of Household (Original): Daughter
Relationship to Head of Household: Daughter
Birthplace: Tennessee
Birth Year (Estimated): 1934
Last Place of Residence: Same Place
District: 15-16
Family Number: 9
Sheet Number and Letter: 1B
Line Number: 41
Affiliate Publication Number: T627
Affiliate Film Number: 3881
Digital Folder Number: 005461287
Image Number: 00456
Household Gender Age Birthplace
Head Cecil Parrott M 39 Tennessee
Wife Audrey Parrott F 34 Tennessee
Son Quentin Parrott M 17 Tennessee
Daughter Mary Elizebeth Parrott F 6 Tennessee
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