Ernest Hamilton "Buddy" Parks
Ernest Hamilton "Buddy" Parks designed boilers, shepherded a church community, maintained historic Chattanooga buildings, and wowed friends and family with the intricate model boats he built. He died Saturday at Regency House Assisted Living in Hixson, Tennessee, at 92.
The boats that occupied his time during his final years bear witness to the passions, skills and character that marked his entire life.
Three long shelves and two glass cases at Hixson's Morning Pointe Senior Living, where he moved with his wife Mackie in 2018, displayed more than 20 meticulously crafted wooden boats he built.
Some boats were 48 inches long. While most had radio-controlled electric motors, genuine steam engines powered two. Many were replicas of historic water craft.
The Geo. W. Washburn, for example, reproduces a steam-powered tug launched in 1890 to ply the Hudson River. "In her early days, she was one of the fastest tugboats on the Hudson," reads a plaque beside the display.
Exquisite details bolster the realism of the model Washburn. A miniature chrome searchlight sits atop the bridge. Further aft, two black smoke stacks rise from the deck, secured by multiple lines of thread-like rigging. The black hull gives way to red below the water line, with the tug's single bronze screw positioned just in front of the rudder at the stern.
In a 2022 Chattanooga Times Free Press story, Parks said that he turned to model boats once Mackie's health no longer allowed the couple to enjoy bigger ones.
"It gave me an outlet to continue my love of boats," Parks told the Times Free Press. The Morning Pointe residence allowed him to convert a storage space beside his and Mackie's apartment into a workshop. He spent hours in the shop, especially after Mackie died in August 2020.
Soon Parks had built so many boats that he began to worry about where to put them. He approached Morning Pointe about building shelves. The residence's corporate owner, Independent Healthcare Properties, said yes.
Parks likely had some extra pull. He had worked for the company 15 years, using his mechanical skill, eye for detail and determination to see projects through as building supervisor and consultant. His tenure was part of a second career that put him in charge of some of Chattanooga's architectural treasures.
After retiring from Combustion Engineering in the mid-1980s, Parks worked with Bob Corker, whose real estate portfolio included such notable structures as the James Building, built in 1907, and the Volunteer Building, finished a decade later. Parks assisted Corker with a variety of projects from the early 1990s until the early 2000s.
"He literally thought the world of him," a family member in touch with Corker after Parks' death reported about the business leader. Corker served as Chattanooga mayor from 2001 to 2005 and U.S. Senator from 2007 to 2018.
Parks also managed the Dome Building, constructed by Chattanooga Times and New York Times publisher Adolph S. Ochs between 1888 and 1892. Described as "one of the city's outstanding landmarks" in the property's application for inclusion in the National Register of Historic Places, to which the National Park Service added it in 1978.
Greg Vital, who co-founded Morning Pointe Senior Living in 1997 with Franklin Farrow, was a previous owner of the prominent structure.
"Buddy was a faithful maintenance and preservation steward of the Dome Building," Vital said, adding that Parks also oversaw the restoration and preservation of a nearby building, the Customs House. Likewise on the National Register, the structure houses the U.S. Bankruptcy Court.
"There was nothing he could not fix or figure out how to keep running," Vital said. "Always a consummate gentleman, … he was also a perfectionist for maintaining the standards of Morning Pointe."
Parks was born in Chattanooga on March 3, 1932, into a family of contractors. His father, Ernest Hamilton Parks, Sr., worked in the trade, and his grandfather, John Parks, built the Tivoli Theater between 1919 and 1921 and Chattanooga's Soldiers and Sailors Memorial Auditorium between 1922 and 1924.
It was at East Lake Junior High that Parks met Mackie Sue Roberts. He went on to Central High School, while Mackie attended Chattanooga High. They married in 1953.
After Parks graduated from the University of Chattanooga in 1955 with a bachelor's in Engineering Physics and a commission as Second Lieutenant in the U.S. Army, the young family moved to Oklahoma, where Parks served as instructor at Fort Sill.
Raised a Baptist, Parks became a member of Churches of Christ the year he married. He attended East Ridge Church of Christ, where he was a deacon, then Hixson Church of Christ, where he served as church elder for 25 years.
The Hixson church provided the engineer and future modeler fresh opportunities to apply his talents.
"He was very detail-oriented," recalled Pat Roark, a fellow elder and friend. Roark singled out Parks' particular concern for the church's physical plant. He recalled his friend's leadership when the congregation renovated its campus, transforming a long, double-barreled auditorium into a gym and multipurpose area and constructing a new worship space.
But Parks paid attention to much more than pews and carpet colors. He "was very good about visiting people," Roark said, adding that Parks "definitely wanted to do what the scriptures called for.
"It was hard on you to serve as an elder. There was a lot of coming and going in the eldership," Roark recalled, adding that at one point only the two of them were left to attend the spiritual needs of 350 congregants. In Churches of Christ, which believe in a plurality of elders rather than leadership by a lone pastor, two elders were the bare minimum.
The two would meet every Wednesday night to discuss the congregation's needs. The following morning, they would check in to be sure the last night's decisions were the best ones.
"They were good friends of ours," Roark said of his fellow elder and his wife Mackie. "He was a very good man."
Parks is survived by his son, Ted; his daughter, Susan Tuckniss (Philip); four grandchildren: Andrew Rogers (Heather), Aden St. Charles and Benjamin (Emily) and Jacob Parks; and five great grandchildren: Jackson, Ella, and Hadley Rogers and Pax and Mabry St. Charles.
The family will receive friend from 1-3 p.m. on Tuesday, Jan. 7, at the North Chapel of Chattanooga Funeral Home. A Celebration of Life Service will be held at 3 p.m. on Tuesday, Jan. 7, in the funeral home chapel.
In lieu of flowers, the family requests donations to Hearth Hospice, whose staff compassionately attended to Parks. The family also wishes to express special thanks to Regency House, where Parks spent his final days.
To share your memories of Parks, please visit www.chattanooganorthchapel.com.
Arrangements are by the North Chapel of Chattanooga Funeral Home, Crematory and Florist, 5401 Highway 153, Hixson, Tn. 37343.