Ronald Parker
Ronald Parker is living proof that long odds are simply that…odds. They don’t define you. A little effort, mixed with a bit of good fortune, can change the tide of one’s life. That is certainly what happened to Parker.
When he was 10-years-old, Parker’s biological mother gave him up to the foster care system, along with his three siblings. The oldest of the four, he begged authorities to keep the siblings together, but was instead forced into a life worse than he had ever imagined.
“My foster mother beat me just about every day,” he says. “My sister and brother’s foster mother abused them as well. It was horrible.”
That lasted two years. During that time, Ronald’s aunt kept fighting to get custody of all four children and was ultimately successful. “That woman is my hero,” he says. “She was only 20 years old, just a kid herself. I don’t know many people who would have done what she did. She is why I do what I do.”
With his aunt’s love and guiding hand, Ronald graduated from high school, the first in his family to do so. He saw an opportunity in military service and decided to join the Navy.
“I loved being in the Navy, I really did,” he says, “at least up until the end.”
An Aviation Ordnanceman, he was assigned a post in Fallujah where he and his unit often came under heavy fire. Its cumulative effect would make its mark. After being medically discharged from the Navy, he returned home to Columbia.
“I had no idea what I was going to do,” he says. “I was almost 30 years old and suffering from PTSD. The military was all I knew. Now, I was just sitting at home trying to figure out how to get out of my own head.”
That was when his little sister made a suggestion. She was a nurse and had graduated from ECPI University in Columbia. She said he ought to visit campus and see if there was anything there that might appeal to him. Parker would eventually end up enrolling in the nursing program, but says he was not as fully committed as he should have been…not at first.
“At the beginning, I was using college as a way to escape,” he says. “It was fortunate I was at a school that really knows how to work with vets. I joined Student Veterans of America ( SVA), and we have a vet center right on campus. There’s always someone there. So if I was having a rough day, there was always someone there I could talk to, someone who knew how I was feeling.
“Still, nursing school was by far the toughest thing I ever did. I had shot people and dodged bullets, but this was so hard. I don’t what I would have done without the support I found there, between the SVA, the faculty, even the receptionist…it was a real family atmosphere.”
Oftentimes, people under duress will say there was a “lightbulb” moment, a place in time when it all clicked; everything seemed to make sense. For Parker, that came when he entered a veteran care facility to begin his first clinical rotation.
“When I started caring for fellow veterans, I realized I had found my calling.”
On Saturday, June 22, Parker will complete the first leg of his improbable journey when he walks across the stage at the River Bluff Performing Arts Center to receive his diploma in practical nursing. However, he says he’s just getting started. He already has a job and plans to continue his education. Next, he wants to become a registered nurse, and then earn his bachelor of science in nursing, eventually, becoming a physician assistant.
Parker, his brother, and sisters have now fulfilled their aunt’s greatest hope—that they not just survive this life, but thrive. As mentioned, one sister is also a nurse, the other just earned her accounting degree, and his brother is a successful recruiter in the U.S. Navy.
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