NCSU Libraries Focus Online

Volume 26 number 2 - Winter 2006

Reid Grover Parks World War II Scrapbook

Ruth Parks presented a scrapbook commemorating her brother, Reid Grover Parks, his student days at NC State, and his World War II service, to the Special Collections Research Center on October 28, 2005. First Lieutenant Parks (1923-1945), Class of 1944, wrote home to his parents and little sister while attending NC State and subsequently serving as an Army Air Corps pilot in the European Theater. A family friend, S. Eugene Younts (NC State B.S. 1952, M.S. 1953), suggested donating the scrapbook to the NCSU Libraries. A University of Georgia vice president emeritus, Younts learned of the unique artifact while researching a book on his early life in North Carolina. Members of the Parks family who traveled from Davidson County to present the scrapbook to the Libraries included [left to right] Michael Carrick; Sarah and Kenny Carrick, both NC State freshmen; Ruth Parks; Casey Carrick (currently an NC State senior); and Ruth Parks’s niece, Carla Lookabill Carrick. First Lt. Parks and the other NC State alumni who gave their lives in the war are remembered by name in the World War II Classes Student Study Room on the second floor of the D. H. Hill Library.