Warren entrepreneur, pilot and former acrobatic pilot Jim Parker can recall with typical precision when his worlds collided and everything he’d carefully built over decades came tumbling down.
It was 2015, he’d sold his Clearwater Filtration and Vacu-Therm businesses to his children which had resulted in a family rift and led to the end of his 49-and-a-half-year marriage to Marilyn Parker. After the sale closed, he went to his office in the Warren hangar to find all his paraphernalia and memorabilia from the last four decades of being an airshow performer in a box on the hangar floor.
These events came on the heels of a friend’s sister committing suicide at 30-years-old after returning from a 10-year career in the military during which she’d been raped and assaulted in Afghanistan. He had spent time talking to her in Rhode Island as she struggled to come to grips with what happened and build a new life with her dogs and an interest in being an EMT. He could not fathom what happened after she went to the VA seeking help and went right to a hotel and committed suicide.
COULD NOT STOP CRYING
“I could not stop crying for three days. Moving on from these businesses I didn’t know what was on the other side. I was so depressed. I’ve always worked through depression before,” he said.
“In all the years I’ve been on the planet, I’d never felt that way. Now, in hindsight, I started to realize that this is how suicidal ideation happens. I called the VA and said something is really not working. I’ve never felt like this before, like I couldn’t fix this,” Parker said. He drove to the VA in White River Junction where they took him into the psych ward and got him stabilized. When he returned to Warren, he began seeing a PhD psychologist and a PhD psychotherapist which he did twice a week for 18 months.
He was put on anti-depressants and was starting to feel more in control. He was beginning to work on new projects and renovating his house. After his friend’s sister committed suicide and he himself called the VA, he was outraged that the outgoing voicemail message offered vets a phone number to call if they were feeling suicidal. With former Senator Patrick Leahy he successfully lobbied the VA to offer a telephone prompt that directed those feeling suicidal to be directly connected to someone who could help.
“I’m so thankful to the VA. They were so responsive in every way. They clarified that I did have PTSD. I started working on myself, learning my triggers and coping mechanisms,” he said.
“And I started working on myself. And for seven years, I've been alone. And I've
realized I'm good alone, because I'm productive,” he said.
SEABEES IN 1968
Parker was 23 when he joined the Seabees in 1968. He had spent half his life in welding, was a pilot and a diver. The work he was doing in the shipyard was of a military nature, so he received deferments before he was drafted. With his welding experience he went in as a Petty Officer First Class.
He served two eight and a half month tours in Vietnam. He worked, mostly solo, overseeing the machinery needed for crushing gravel to rebuild roads and bridges.
The Viet Cong targeted roads and bridges, planting roadside bombs, one of which killed his direct supervisor, Chief McCann, his mentor.
“He was on his third tour of duty in Vietnam and had been in for 30 years. He was about to retire,” Parker said.
WAR IS GRUESOME
Another time, he came to a job site to find it deserted and equipment on its side. The company had taken a hit the night before. Walking up the hill behind the site he found bodies as far as the eye could see with the Viet Cong severing an ear from each of their soldiers to count the dead.
“It was gruesome, but war is very gruesome like that. The nature of Vietnam was to get in trouble, to get shot at and to have to shoot back,” Parker said.
His first near death experience occurred when an ammunitions dump was bombed near one of the construction sites, leveling every building at the site from the concussions as he was right in the middle of it.
After 13 months of continuous service in Vietnam, Parker returned home and resumed welding which he did for the next 12, meeting Marilyn and discovering the Mad River Valley.
JUMP OUT OF BED
When he first returned, he’d hear a siren or ambulance and jump out of bed and start running.
“I was very hypervigilant which may be very difficult to be around. I knew I was a different person coming back. I was on everyone’s case all the time,” he said.
He became a big risk taker, running multiple businesses, performing daring acrobatic moves in airshows, diving deep and alone. He and Marilyn had three kids. If he was on the cusp of falling asleep and the kids screamed or made noise, it sent him right back to Vietnam, causing him to react in anger and fear.
“A lot of people ran away from me in 47 years,” Parker said.
SMELL THE CORDITE
Some things from his time in Vietnam never left him, like the smells of war, something that no Hollywood movie can ever capture. He’s carried Vietnam with him for decades.
“I can still smell the cordite. I can smell it right now,” he said from his dining room table in Warren last week.
Unlike many vets who returned from war to fall into alcohol or drugs, Parker is pretty much a teetotaler who never drank until he was 28 and not much ever again after that. He had his first beer at 72 when his kids opened Collaborative Brewing. He channeled his PTSD into work and while he is now coping, work remains an important outlet for him.
SEEK ACTIVITY
“I don’t seek peace, I seek activity,” he noted. His current business is a diving device that the military loves. He may still flinch if he hears sounds in the night, but now, not so much. He still finds himself reacting to things that trigger him, but he manages them. He and his former wife have an amicable relationship now and he has repaired his relationship with his children.
“Because I have eight grandchildren and four great-grandchildren, I want to be a different person for them. My kids have seen that change,” he added.
Reflecting on PTSD he noted that going back to the days of the Roman Empire, soldiers had to walk nine months to get home which gave them time to process what they’d experienced. That interval, between battle and home gradually shortened over the centuries, from ships to cargo ships to trains taking days weeks and months to get home.
“And then, finally, Vietnam, and we’re home in 24 hours or we’re going on R and R from a war zone. There’s a component of transition time that people need after facing the horror of war,” he added.
