For Alison. Andy Parker
Alison would laughingly tell the story, “As I was racing in my heat, I could hear one black classmate shrieking at the top of her lungs, ‘Run little white girl, run!’” She led the field.
Her classmates respected her ability, and it was an example of Alison’s underlying fierce competitiveness. Alison wasn’t content to just compete at anything. Her goal was to win at everything. And she practically did, with extraordinary composure.
Barbara and I put Alison in gymnastics when she was around seven years old. After a couple of years of learning various skills, she was ready for her first competition. Like any sports dad, I vividly recall the first routine she did at her meet. It was the floor routine, and while my heart was pounding with excitement, she coolly nailed it. On the balance beam and vault she was fearless. I can’t remember now how the meet turned out, but I know she placed in her very first event.
Through sixth grade, she competed around the state and took home her fair share of medals. All the while, she was taking dance classes, which she’d started when she was four years old. The wear and tear on her knees was taking its toll, so she decided to give up gymnastics and concentrate on dance. By then, she was also hitting her growth spurt. It’s rare to see a 5´9˝ gymnast, and it was clear that was the direction she was heading in.
Alison excelled in dance just as much as she excelled in gymnastics. At her dance studio’s year-end recital, she performed the role of Dewdrop in Waltz of the Flowers. I will never forget it, just as I’ll never forget the tears of pride that streamed down my face as I watched her. She was in sixth grade, the youngest dancer in the class to dance en pointe. Those strong gymnast ankles made all the difference. She was the graceful little angel upstage in the spotlight while all the older girls were downstage. She glided gracefully, effortlessly executing pirouettes. At the end of the performance, the crowd went nuts and I went to pieces. My heart was bursting with pride, but Alison was cool as a cucumber.
By the time Alison was a junior in high school, I was sure she had the talent and the looks to go to Broadway. That opinion wasn’t just subjective. I had performed on Broadway in a past life and I knew what talent looks like. The mark of a great performer is performing effortlessly. She was fluid and graceful and she danced that way through high school. I’ll always wonder what it would have been like to watch her in New York.
As a junior, Alison decided to try out for the swim team. She had reached her full height, and her strong dancer’s body also turned out to be perfect for swimming. She was a competitive swimmer during her last two years of high school, swimming freestyle, medley, and her specialty, the butterfly. She won each event in every local meet. Some girls on the swim team were in it for the social aspect and merely wanted to participate; Alison wanted to beat every one of them—and she did. She received the Piedmont District Swimmer of the Year Award both her junior and senior years.
In cities the size of Richmond, Virginia, high school swimmers were in the pool practicing twenty hours a week, but our much-smaller hometown of Martinsville, about three hours west, didn’t afford that opportunity. They could only practice at the YMCA for about six hours a week. As a result, when Alison competed regionally, she didn’t win, but she was able to qualify for the state meet her junior and senior years. She did it on sheer ability. Had she been part of the team that produced our good friend Lori Haas’s son Townley, I have no doubt she could have gone on to win an Olympic gold like him.
Soon enough, we discovered the wonders of white-water paddling, first on guided rafting trips on the New and Gauley Rivers. By the time we graduated to kayaking, Alison was intuitive and fearless on the water. Our first guide told us, “When you get to that big rapid, keep paddling. Don’t stop or you’ll get pulled back into the hole.”
“Keep paddling” became our family slogan, though we didn’t know at the time how much it would one day mean to us.
While Alison had a talent for nearly everything she touched, she didn’t let it inflate her ego. She never lost the ability to laugh at herself. There was one story in particular that followed her for her whole life.
It began back in 1994 when we had had enough of Maryland’s cold weather and high taxes. We sold the house, stored the furniture, and drove to Texas to spend Christmas with family. I had sold my golf shirt business and was about to start a new job as a partner in a new endeavor, but it fell through the day after Christmas. I had to get another job fast, and I ended up taking one with Cross Creek Apparel in Mount Airy, North Carolina. They also made golf shirts, and the president of Cross Creek liked my creativity and offered me a job to make licensed PGA Tour merchandise.
We were in Mount Airy for a year and then I was transferred to Columbus, Georgia, where they housed all their licensing projects. It was a miserable time for me and Barbara. The brutal heat and humidity in Georgia made us miss Mount Airy more than we did already, but Drew and Alison were quite resilient. They adapted well, and we did everything together. We were fortunate that our best friends just happened to be each other.
In Columbus, Alison was in kindergarten at Reese Road Elementary School. One day her teacher was reading a story to the class. All the students sat on the floor in a semicircle in front of her. What follows is an account in Alison’s own words.
“When I was five years old, I started kindergarten at Reese Road School. My teacher Mrs. Enmond was full of encouragement and entertainment, and my classmates and I really enjoyed her class because she was kind, caring, and willing to help us whenever we needed her. Because she was so wonderful, we all wished she was our mother! On the day I discovered her flaw, I also learned an important lesson about myself.
“On that infamous day, Mrs. Enmond and the class were sitting in a circle for story time. Because she was reading [a story about] Marshmallow the bunny, I was in the front listening attentively to my favorite story. Suddenly, complete chaos invaded this peaceful story time, and everyone was shrieking and running around the room! Confused, I approached my friend Victoria and shouted, ‘What’s going on?’ She exclaimed frantically, ‘There’s a cockroach on the floor!’ At that very moment, I felt tiny little legs crawling up my arm and into my dress. I scrambled to find Mrs. Enmond, who was just as frenzied as the rest of us. ‘Mrs. Enmond! I think there is a cockroach in my dress!’ I screamed. She took one look at me, leaped onto her desk, and waved her arms in the air, screeching, ‘I can’t help you!’ Because all of my classmates realized that the cockroach was not chasing them, but rather crawling on me, they all giggled while I just stood there. Finally, the teacher’s aide grabbed me and shook my dress vigorously until the cockroach fell onto the floor. Calmly, she retrieved the fly swatter and flattened the bug.”
Alison was embarrassed by the cockroach story, but as she demonstrated through her developing skills, a story like this could be helpful in learning how to find humor in situations. It could connect with an audience.
The cockroach story resurfaced five years later at a 4-H speech competition when Alison was in fifth grade. By that time, we had moved to Martinsville where I had a new job with Tultex Corporation. We didn’t know it then, but Southside Virginia would become our permanent home.
The same confidence Alison had shown in her endeavors since the age of two was apparent in her speech competitions. She won the local competition and advanced to the district level. Some years later, she wrote about her 4-H experience:
“As embarrassing as the [cockroach] story may sound, I learned something from this and have been able to use it to my advantage. For example, I competed in the 4-H Public Speaking Competition. My classmates decided to write about cliché topics like ‘the most influential person they know,’ or ‘what integrity meant to them.’ This was the time for me to test the usefulness of this embarrassment. When I stood before my first audience and delivered this speech, people had puzzled looks on their faces. No audience member had ever heard something so ‘unique.’ I received my scorecard and had advanced to the next level! Finally, after a series of competitions, I reached the state level competition. I was extremely nervous because all of the other competitors had very intelligent speeches about the economy, social issues, and other serious matters that were over my head. Standing at the podium I took a deep breath and gave my speech. I won.”
She wasn’t through