Parks was born in June of 1939 in Spokane, Washington, and spent the first twelve years of his life east of the mountains. He was exposed to things nautical at an early age; family photos show a young Mr. Weaver, about age 4, in an El Toro with his siblings, learning the basic principles of “messing about in boats”. His early serious sailing experiences were on a hand-built wooden Blanchard, with his dad, on Lake Coeur d’Alene. The family moved to Olympia in 1951, when his father was appointed to the Washington Supreme Court. Although the family had a sailboat, Parks’ forte was swimming. He was on State Championship swim teams while attending Olympia High School, and starred on the Stanford University swim team. After graduating from Stanford, he attended Gonzaga University School of Law, graduating in the mid-60’s. He moved back to Olympia with his wife Toni in 1966, and practiced law for the next 39 years, prior to his death on April 26, 2007, six months after receiving a diagnosis of pancreatic cancer.
From the time he returned to Puget Sound, Parks embraced sailing with a passion. He and the family cruised on his dad’s Columbia 28, Res Ipse, towing the dinghy Loquitur in and out of Olympia harbor. He also crewed on numerous Olympia boats, and began racing in regional events such as Southern Straits of Georgia, Great Equalizer, and the Tri Island Series on the late Harold Sargeant’s Columbia 36, Bridget, among such notable crew members as Gary Burk, Cal Kinnear, Howard Bullpitt, the late Ron Rowe, and the late Bud Tucker. He also learned at the feet of the master, Gene Sibold.
I first met Mr. Weaver on a grey November day in 1972, on the docks of Olympia Yacht Club, where I had been invited to join the crew of Bill Veatch’s Cal 40, Tetua. Moored next to her was Harold Sargent’s new Yankee 38, as yet un-named, apart from Harold’s wife Ann, who always referred to it as “that damn Yankee”. Parks and the rest of the crew were busy drilling holes and installing gear on the newly-arrived craft. That was about the time I heard my first Weaver story, something about a recent Strait of Georgia race, in which Bridget had suffered a nasty knockdown, necessitating that the spinnaker be dropped. As I understand it, as the chute came down, Mr. Weaver was hoisted up the mast in an inverted position, with the spinnaker halyard coiled around his ankle. After that, the stories just kept getting better!
Parks and I became friends, and then good friends. It was always great fun having him on board Renegade, and later, Priority in both local and regional races, and sharing in his encyclopedic knowledge of things nautical. He continued to race with Harold, and then, as explained by Toni, “he fell into the clutches of Ken Partlow, and the rest is history”.
In the mid-70’s Ken acquired the Valiant 40, Liza-K, and decided to do the 1976 Vic-Maui race. Parks and I were the watch captains, Stew Bledsoe the navigator, joined by Keith Partlow, Skip Steffen, and Steve Thomas. Ken had recently installed a new Loran A, an 18-inch cube beside the nav station. It took about 25 minutes to run one Loran LOP. Although the use of electronic navigational equipment was specifically forbidden by the RVYC, Parks and I each ran one LOP every night, one of us doing the X-axis, and the other the Y. We secretly compiled the lines, and soon gained confidence in Stew’s navigating ability, and his DR plot, upon which we turned off the Loran, and told the crew that we had broken it. After a brief panic, they settled down to enjoy the crossing. Besides, it was more fun navigating by tuning in the amateur baseball games on Hilo AM radio, and getting a fix off of the null of the radio signal. Ultimately we found Maui, but not before enjoying Mr. Weaver’s gastronomic contributions. Who can forget eggs and flour being rolled out on the galley table, cut into strips, hung on coat hangers from the grab rail to dry, and boiled up into the best pasta we had ever tasted? Eventually we sailed abeam Diamond Head. All of our wives came out to the finish line on a spectator boat, to witness our survival. Margaret Sibold has a photograph of Parks mooning them in greeting!
Vic-Maui was such fun, that the next year we ferried the boat to Los Angeles, and did TransPac. That was an even better ride! In Los Angeles Harbor, Parks and I presented Ken and Katy with a new set of engraved stainless flatware for the boat. We did it by my climbing onto the deck, and starting to throw the old flatware overboard, with disparaging comments about pitting and rust. Only Parks’ quick action saved me from certain death at Katy’s hands! Tom McPhee, Kevin Partlow, and the late Gene Sibold joined us on TransPac, which was a great ride, with a laugh a minute, good wines, a 24-7 cooking competition, and a Gene Sibold knockdown that can never be duplicated! We ran a fishing line every day, and we often caught tuna or Mahi Mahi. It should be noted that whenever a fish was hooked, Nurse Weaver had the surgical instruments ready for me on deck, often before the fish was out of the water, bolstering his standing as the second best scrub nurse I ever worked with.
In the course of many weeks at sea, and a lot of night sailing, he and I discovered how much we had to talk about. You can well imagine that after three ocean crossings together, we had covered just about every topic there was to discuss, and that we could amuse one another for hours, with thoughts and reflections on life, often agreeing, but just as often discovering interesting disparities of opinion, which always kept the conversation lively.
Along the line, Parks acquired the Cal 36, Ivory Gull, which became his pride and joy. He totally re-outfitted and re-powered the boat, and it became not only his family vacation cabin, but his floating auxiliary office. He frequently left his law office with the files of cases he was working on, took them down to the Yacht Club, spread them out in the boat, and worked out solutions for these cases in floating solitude, more easily than he could have done in a busy office. He came to appreciate that silence, such that he eventually left his firm, and went into solo practice for the last eighteen years of his life, continuing to use the boat as an auxiliary conference room.
He decided to cruise Ivory Gull to Hawaii in 1984, accompanying the Vic-Maui Race. Sailing westbound with him were Dick Allard, Chick Kaiser, and Dick Lutz. I flew over to Lahaina, and the two of us spent several days climbing the mast, re-bedding loose fittings, and re-provisioning for the return trip. Stew Bledsoe and Henry Sandahl flew in to join us. A sailboat in Lahaina harbor may be the best chick magnet I have ever been associated with. The yarns he spun for inquisitive onlookers were sensational. I laughed so hard, I almost fell out of the bosun’s chair! One of the highlights of this crossing was the game of trivial pursuit we played, greatly modified for a rolling deck. The game started one day out of Lahaina, and finished arbitrarily abeam Pillar Point, WA. It was ultimately won, via dastardly subterfuge, by Parks and Stew. Hank and I have for years carried the shame and ignominy of that loss, of which we were constantly reminded by Mr. Weaver.
His navigational expertise led to his being recruited on several occasions to help with the ferrying of boats up and down the coast. He knew that the safe passage always lay 200+ miles offshore, to the consternation of skippers inexperienced with open ocean passages. He always enjoyed introducing them to the experience.
Parks’ contribution to the Yacht Club, rising through the chairs to become commodore, were considerable. Who can forget the Commodore’s ball we threw for him on his accession? Parks wore a green T-shirt, on the front of which was the DNR crest, and “PARKS”. Toni’s said “RECREATION”. OYC has never been the same! During that time frame, he helped found the juniors program, and was a mover and shaker in its successful development over the years. Whenever he took juniors sailing on Ivory Gull, he stressed keeping the boat off of the hard, pointing out cormorants standing on stumps or logs in the mud with their wings spread to dry, and saying, “Always avoid the Jesus Birds, because the water is very shallow there...”
Parks’ sense of humor was legendary. He was a constant source of jokes, most unrepeatable in public. I’m not sure that I ever e-mailed him a joke or cartoon that he hadn’t already seen. He lived an almost madcap existence, with a non-ending daily series of adventures that would have exhausted an ordinary mortal. Margaret Sibold tells of one evening when they took to his hot tub late after dinner. Gene was tired and drove home early. Later, Parks and Margaret emerged from the tub, donning robes, so that Parks could drive her home. They speculated on what would have happened, had the police stopped the car for any reason, and found the Port Manager’s wife in the car with her attorney, wearing nothing but bathrobes!
He called me as soon as he got his diagnosis. We spent a lot of time together thereafter, as he trod the difficult path through surgery and chemotherapy. During our last “in depth” discussion, he said to me, “I’ve had an absolutely wonderful life, and a great family, and I’ve done just about everything I ever wanted to do.” Even near the end, he kept his sense of humor. I visited him almost every day both in St. Peter Hospital, and in Mother Joseph’s. Even on the day he was emerging from a coma, he could joke. I walked into his room, shook him, and said, “Parks, do you know who I am?”. He opened his eyes, got that funny half smile on his lips, and said, “Unfortunately, yes!”
Regrettably, we never did finish the conversation that started thirty five years ago.
I loved him, and I miss him.
Sherwood Smith
The author expresses his thanks to Toni Weaver, Jill Floberg, Margaret Sibold, and David Elliott, for jogging my memory with Weaverisms.