The Colonel (15 page)

The Humane Society position seemed custom made for Parker’s unusual background—a job that allowed him to indulge his love and understanding of animals while
calling on his skills as a promoter. In between rescuing mewing kittens hung in trees and caring for the occasional stray cow, Parker was to spearhead fund-raising drives that would bring the
shelter into the black.

The job paid a salary, of course, the first steady paycheck Parker received since the early months of the Gene Austin tent show. But it was the perks of the job that turned Parker’s head,
especially the furnished, rent-free apartment, which ran the full length of the second floor of the Humane Society, located in a pretty, ornate building festooned with Spanish accents at 3607 North
Armenia Avenue, then a remote area of West Tampa.

The apartment was large enough for Tom, Marie, and fifteen-year-old Bobby—certainly bigger than any living quarters the family had occupied before—and if it bothered Parker that the
arrangement was eerily reminiscent of the van Kuijk family’s rooms over the van Gend en Loos stables, he quickly dismissed such thoughts upon learning what else the job had to offer. Should
he convert his automobile into an “emergency ambulance” for the transportation of animals, for example, the shelter would furnish his gasoline and tires, even if the country entered the
war and such commodities became rationed.

In this fashion, Parker could feed his insatiable lust for free goods and services, as well as gloat that he had been able to manipulate the system as never before. The job gave him the
appearance of a county official, with a status and authority that elevated him, if only slightly, above the average citizen. He would wear a furnished uniform of light shirt, dark pants, and
official cap and visor, which delighted him beyond reason.

From the outset, Parker tackled the job with gusto, setting up a meticulous log of every ambulance run and rescue mission. In November 1940, he recorded in precise handwriting, “Beating
pony. Columbus Drive. Complaint settled,” and, “Goat no water. Okay. McBerry St.” Later, he turned more loquacious: “Horse with no shoe pulling ice wagon. Sixth Avenue. Man
warned to get shoes on horse.” And, “Boys shooting birds. Belmont Heights. Field agent gave boys lecture.”

The Hillsborough County Humane Society was in desperate need of an image boost and makeover, and the new field agent started out with a myriad of plans for raising money. He first asked local
businessmen to donate money for pet supplies, but that stopped when the word got out
that Parker had traded cases of animal food for tuna fish and prime cuts of meat that the
Parkers would eat themselves. Then he staged a dog’s “fall” into a deep but narrow hole so he could take up a collection to hire a midget to crawl down for the
“rescue.” Few who came to the Humane Society for any reason left without a pet, and within a year of Parker’s appointment, the Humane Society was solvent. What nobody understood,
Parker thought, was that he didn’t really give away fluffy kittens and snowball pups. He sold magic.

In seeking frequent newspaper coverage for the shelter’s activities, Parker also made himself a familiar figure in the community. He delighted in dressing up as Santa and giving puppies
away to children at Christmas. And by donning the Santa Claus suit—which he reprised at the Maas Brothers department store to earn money for the pound—Parker, in essence, wore yet
another “uniform,” casting himself as the compassionate philanthropist, a figure to be loved and trusted. He would return to the role each December throughout his life, both because he
enjoyed giving presents to children and because the persona made him out to be a star. In his hungrier moments, he sometimes asked the children if they wouldn’t like to take Santa out for a
hamburger afterward.

Parker’s assistant during the Humane Society days was a twenty-three-year-old flunky with the unlikely name of Bevo Bevis. Mildly mentally retarded from birth, Jason Boyd Bevis Jr. had
lost his father, a Phenix City, Alabama, undertaker, at age twelve, and moved to Tampa with his mother and brother shortly thereafter. In regarding Parker as a surrogate father, even calling him
Pops, Bevo, with his simpleton’s stare, was all too happy to carry out any request.

The field agent treated Bevo almost like a child, using him to do a lot of the grunt work that Bobby or Marie wouldn’t tackle without a fuss. - Bevo’s family resented how Parker took
advantage of the boy’s disability to assign him the most undesirable tasks, but in the presence of others, Parker referred to him as Mr. Bevis.

Bevo came in particularly handy when Parker set up one of his most inspired and creative moneymaking schemes, that of the pet cemetery. First, Parker called for a “high-level
conference” with Bevo in the large yard that ran behind the building and the wire pens out back, telling him they were about to embark on a “great adventure.” Then he instructed
him to cut down the overgrowth, pick up the broken bottles and debris, and manicure the grass.

“As you know, Mr. Bevis,” he explained, “we have many important
people coming out here. We’re going to start a new project, and you will be meeting
some of the leading citizens in the course of it. I want them to address you by your new title, General Manager of Perpetual Care for Deceased Pets.”

As Bevo readied the lot, Parker visited a monument company and talked the owner into making a free doggy tombstone (
HERE LIES SPOT
,
A BELOVED AND
FAITHFUL COMPANION
), promising that many of Tampa’s bereaved pet owners would soon set their precious dogs and cats to eternal rest behind the shelter. Bevo dug a small hole in the
backyard, pushed up a mound of dirt, and placed Spot’s marker at the head.

Parker was pleased with himself. No pet lover could resist it. He’d pay the monument company $15 and charge the owners $50. But why stop there? “Bevo,” he called across the
yard, “can you make little coffins?” Bevo was hardly a carpenter, but he told Pops he would try, and soon Parker figured he could hike the cost of a Fido funeral up to $100 with the
casket and a promise to decorate the grave with fresh daisies, castoffs he got free from the neighborhood florists.

If a pet owner happened to stop by and express surprise at the condition of the flowers, Parker would frown and shake his head. “I wish you could have been here yesterday when we placed
them. They’re a bit wilted now, but they looked sensational then. Isn’t that right, Mr. Bevis?”

Bevo Bevis would thread his way in and out of Parker’s life until his death at age sixty-two in 1980. Their relationship was always marred by mutual frustration, and during that forty-year
span, Parker fired him almost as many times as Bevo quit and went home to Tampa. As time went on, Parker treated him with increasing cruelty, making him the butt of jokes and placing him in
countless humiliating situations.

“Colonel took care of Bevo, but he was rough on Bevo, too,” remembers Parker’s friend Al Dvorin. “He made Bevo the fall guy.”

Despite all of his shortcomings and annoying faults, the pathetic Bevo was, in essence, the first in a long line of younger associates on whom Parker conferred the title of son. Through the
years, there would be at least a dozen such young men—from Byron Raphael, to the actor George Hamilton, to the concert promoters Mike Crowley and Greg McDonald, to country music’s
LeGarde twins, Ted and Tom.

Just why Parker needed so many surrogates, especially since he already had a stepson in Bobby Ross, begs the question. And since Parker, from all reports, adored children, the fact that he and
Marie had no offspring of their own sets up another debate.

Certainly the Parkers were devoted to each other. At the Humane Society, Marie helped him care for the animals and marshaled the bookkeeping records. She would work right
by Parker’s side through the Eddy Arnold era. And though the world of country music and rock and roll was a hotbed of sexuality, no story ever circulated of Parker having affairs, at least
not in the years when Marie was vital and healthy.

“He was always so crazy about Marie in the days that I was around him,” says music executive Buddy Killen, who first met the Parkers in the early ’50s. And then came that weird
exchange during the Country and Western Disc Jockey convention, when Killen walked out of Nashville’s Andrew Jackson Hotel just as the Parkers walked in.

“Marie yelled, ‘Hey Buddy!’ And she held her arms out and I ran over and hugged her and kissed her on the cheek. And Tom said, ‘Hey, boy, stop that! Don’t do that
anymore!’ And he was very serious. I was just a kid, so I wasn’t interested in his wife. But he didn’t like anybody kissing on her, even a little peck.”

In Killen’s estimation, the Parkers had a fabulous marriage. But the union may have been based more on the practicalities of partnership, - Parker’s display of jealousy
notwithstanding. “I know he and Marie - weren’t happy at home, or at least not as the years went on,” says Gabe Tucker. The main problem, both Tucker and Bitsy Mott assert, was -
Parker’s domination. “As for kids,” says Tucker, “he liked kids, but he - didn’t want them around too long.”

Parker’s perceived fear of emotional intimacy, except with select friends through the years, seemed to spill over into a fear of another kind. Whether rooted in anger or in his need to
control, Parker often had a violent reaction to being touched, especially by a woman. Someone as non-threatening as a coffee shop waitress, taking his elbow as she poured a cup of coffee, could
raise an outburst in him that ruined the day.

Agreeing with Byron Raphael, psychologist Peter Whitmer believes Parker was simply asexual. One family member believes he was sterile, the after effects of mumps he suffered from at age
nine.

Instead of having his own children, then, Parker found it more desirable to choose them, as with his surrogate sons, who tended to revere him as a heroic figure, and most of all, wouldn’t
think of drawing too much attention to themselves in Parker’s presence.

Bobby Ross’s refusal to adhere to Parker’s notion of the father-son alliance was at the core of a relationship that became difficult over time. Bobby looked at Parker more as an
older friend than as a father, and
Parker, who never legally adopted him, seems to have held him at emotional bay.

By his high school years, Bobby had begun to exert his independence, finding employment first as a delivery boy for a local drugstore, and then at Tampa Shipbuilding, saving enough money to buy
a used car. The youngster either earned, or was provided with, whatever accoutrements he needed in those crucial years of peer pressure, dating, and social growth, and Bobby proved to be a popular
boy at school, his senior class voting him the “most athletic” with the “ideal senior smile.”

But Parker apparently resented the handsome teen’s popularity, as well as his ease with women, for the quick-witted Bobby had inherited his biological father’s striking good looks
and appetite for the opposite sex. In his job as the drugstore delivery boy, he’d sometimes get a call for a quart of ice cream, be invited inside by the lady of the house, and “and be
there long enough for the ice cream to melt,” says Sandra Polk Ross. “Colonel suppressed Bobby, because he didn’t want him to have the attention. All of the girls thought he was
wonderful.”

One girl had found Bobby irresistible since the age of twelve. Marian DeDyne, a petite, dark-haired beauty, was Bobby’s constant companion during high school, and on August 18, 1944, two
months after Bobby graduated, they married.

In a photo taken at a family picnic in 1943, Bobby beams to have her beside him, as a pudgy but youthful Parker, dressed in Bermuda shorts, dives into an enormous bowl of ice cream. Such
indulgences were not lost on the shelter’s occasional volunteers, who harbored resentment over - Parker’s exacting standards for cleanliness and order, and for his strange and endless
requests to be addressed as “Doctor.” Whether anyone had the nerve to say it to his face, secretly they referred to the ever-ballooning Parker with a more sardonic nickname:
“Tiny.”

D
URING
his years of caring for Tampa’s displaced pets, Parker spun off the career that would
eventually lead him out of Florida and up to Tennessee—that of a country music concert promoter, booking Grand Ole Opry stars out of Nashville. He started in 1941 as the nation went to war,
mostly to earn money for the Humane Society. Parker knew nothing about country-and-western music, with its predominant themes of Mother, death, and the lamentable wages of sin, preferring the
sentimental crooning of Gene Austin to the nasal whine of Nashville. But he’d had it on good authority that hillbilly was the music of the common man, in this case, the Florida farmers and
working class, who revered the Opry stars as something close to demigods. And so, with a sliver of the proceeds going to the war effort, Parker and two partners rented the great, sprawling Fort
Homer W. Hesterly National Guard Armory, a recently completed WPA project on Howard Avenue.

Parker’s first venture into concert promotion starred the future “King of the Hillbillies” (later changed to “the King of Country Music”), Roy Acuff, and a new
comic named Minnie Pearl, who had just joined the Grand Ole Opry in November 1940. That December, she started on the road with Acuff at $50 a week, but only under the directive that she abbreviate
her opening patter: “How-dee! I’m just so proud to be here! I’m so proud I could come!” Acuff, the son of a Baptist preacher, got drunk on occasion, but once he became the
Opry’s first network radio host in 1939, he kept his professional image clean as a cat’s paw. And so he took
his “extra added attraction” aside and
spoke in low tones. “Minnie, you’ll have to leave off that last part. It’s just too suggestive.”

A twenty-nine-year-old college-educated actress, Pearl, née Sarah Ophelia Colley, was the daughter of a prosperous Tennessee lumber man who’d lost his fortune in the crash of
’29. Although the cultured Colley had traveled the Deep South organizing amateur productions of drama and musical comedy—that was where she’d gleaned the inspiration for the
character of Minnie Pearl, the country girl in the Mary Janes with