Sarah Catherine Paine Parks

Date of Birth

April 27, 1916

Date of Death

September 8, 2010

City of Death

Santa Barbara

April 27, 1916-September 8, 2010

Sarah Catherine Paine Parks – Sally Parks – died in her home, calmly and with her characteristic dignity, on September 8, 2010. Sally was 94 years old at the time of her death and was surrounded in her final days by two generations of loving family members. She was born in York, Pennsylvania, the youngest of five children after her brothers John and Bill and her sisters Mary and Mildred. As a child and throughout her life she was a strong, resourceful and resilient person who, with the help of her siblings, overcame the loss of her father when she was only fourteen to fashion for herself a full and generous life. As a young woman, in the midst of the Great Depression, she graduated as her high school valedictorian and chose to enter the University of Michigan where she supported herself while completing her BA in English.

It was in Ann Arbor that she met Frank Ernest Parks who, as a visiting pharmacist in the hospital where she worked in registration, was immediately captivated by her warmth, beauty and intelligence. These initial impressions never left him. Ernie and Sally were married shortly after her graduation in 1939 and spent the next sixty years together in loving companionship and an always lively embrace of life.

In addition to her personal accomplishments, her career as an academic advisor in social work at Michigan State University, her travels and her generosity toward others, she raised four children – Gregg, Kitty, Mary Ann and Brad – to whom she devoted herself with unmatched care, attention, wisdom and wit.

Sally’s husband and two of her four children – Kitty and Gregg – predeceased her. She is survived by her other two children – Mary Ann Slutzky and Brad Parks – and by their spouses, Don Slutzky and Lisa Cosentino. She is also survived by her son Gregg’s wife Betsy and by her four grandchildren who also thrived under her care: Jonathan Parks and Alexis, Caleb and Caitlin Slutzky.

The family would like to express its thanks to all of the staff at the Villa Riviera for the wonderful love and care they gave to Sally over these last four years. There will be a memorial service at Calvary Cemetery at 199 North Hope Avenue in Santa Barbara on Saturday September 18th at 11am. Arrangements by Welch-Ryce-Haider Funeral Chapels.

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