Clicking on banner ads enables JWR to constantly improve
Jewish World Review Feb. 8, 2001 / 15 Shevat, 5761

Mike Harden

JWR's Pundits
World Editorial
Cartoon Showcase

Mallard Fillmore

Michael Barone
Mona Charen
Linda Chavez
Greg Crosby
Larry Elder
Don Feder
Suzanne Fields
James Glassman
Paul Greenberg
Bob Greene
Betsy Hart
Nat Hentoff
David Horowitz
Marianne Jennings
Michael Kelly
Mort Kondracke
Ch. Krauthammer
Lawrence Kudlow
Dr. Laura
John Leo
David Limbaugh
Michelle Malkin
Jackie Mason
Chris Matthews
Michael Medved
MUGGER
Kathleen Parker
Wes Pruden
Sam Schulman
Amity Shlaes
Roger Simon
Tony Snow
Thomas Sowell
Cal Thomas
Jonathan S. Tobin
Ben Wattenberg
George Will
Bruce Williams
Walter Williams
Mort Zuckerman

Consumer Reports


Turning to writing late in life

http://www.jewishworldreview.com -- THE MOST DRAMATIC impression Wayne Parrish left on Columbus East High School came when he tumbled off the raised stage that doubled as a basketball court, into the orchestra pit and through the bass drum, breaking his leg in the process.

Sidelined from sports as the bones mended, he donned the mascot uniform of the East Tigers and, limping, watched from courtside as the team marched on to a state championship in basketball.

A guest speaker at one of the East pep rallies, during those glory days of the early '50s, was Columbus Dispatch columnist Johnny Jones. After interviewing the mascot and reading one of Parrish's stories, the scribe said, "You are a natural storyteller. Storytellers are the voice of the past, present and future.

Visionaries walk a long, difficult and often lonely road, but their road is the high ground."

"I really didn't understand what Mr. Jones was saying," Parrish said, by way of acknowledging that it took him almost a half-century after his 1950 graduation to become a published author.

The Korean War began only days after Parrish received his high school diploma and, within a year, the local draft board would catch up with him before he could write the first sentence of a novel.

A combat veteran who served with the 3rd Marine Division, he finished his stretch in the service, attended college at San Diego State University and chose teaching over writing.

In an interview from his Cayucos, Calif., home recently, Parrish detailed his work with native American and Spanish-speaking grade school students following college.

"I was starting to collect Indian legends," he said of those days. "My wife-to-be Berta was a reading instructor trying to develop bilingual materials for Spanish-speaking students."

Together they discovered that by setting aside Dick and Jane and teaching reading using stories and legends set in environments familiar to their students, they could engage them much more readily in the business of learning to read.

"The scores just jumped four years right off the bat," he said, "simply because they had a contextual reference point."

He and his wife would employ this concept everywhere from Mexico, to New Guinea to the Tonga Islands.

He spent 27 years as a professor of education at Arizona State University in Tempe, though, for 11 of those years, he was off somewhere in the South Pacific, Europe or the Caribbean studying legends and cultures.

Not until last year did the East High School alumnus' novel "Blue Owl" roll off the presses.

He said of the work, "The novel blends art theft, archeological and ecological vandalism and murder with the fascination with rock art (petroglyphs) and mythology."

It also weaves a tight tale of suspense and intrigue that moves along a parallel track with a regrettably non-fiction lament about suburban sprawl into the desert Southwest.

To understand how close the fragile ecosystem of the area has become to Parrish's heart, one need only read a brief narrative passage from "Blue Owl" describing sunrise on the fringe of the desert:

"Beyond the orchard, a band of javelinas was moving through the creosote bushes. Mesquite, cats claw, and huckleberries sprang up in the sandy patches between the granite hillocks. Ironwood, sapote, and white-flowered plumbago were scattered along the wash. A Gila woodpecker, its red head flashing, sat half-hidden behind one of the limbs of the eucalyptus.

"A white-necked raven landed on top of the scarecrow, made from saguaro cactus ribs and clothed in Ruiz's faded jeans and flannel shirt, and cocked its head and surveyed the bean patch. The colors of dawn luminated the peaks of the far-away Superstition Mountains, lighting the blue-gray mists that floated across the Salt River Valley. The first pinks turned to electric orange and finally to a searing white slash that streaked across the cobalt sky."

The late columnist Jones was right.

Fifty years too early, but right.

Asked why he did not begin writing novels until more than threescore years into life, Parrish recalled that the late financier and presidential advisor Bernard Baruch was asked (in his late 80s) what might yet remain in life to intrigue such a world-wise octogenarian _ what tantalizing dessert had not yet been savored.

"I saved the stars and Steinbeck," the old man said.

Comment by clicking here.

Up

© 2001, SHNS