Remembering Dr. Jack Parry

Photo courtesy of the Windsor-Essex County Sports Hall of Fame

With the annual Dr Jack Parry Awards set to be doled out later this week, the daughter of the man after whom the awards are named is paying tribute to her father.

As heard on CK Sports Talk Monday night, Jan Parry Wickett says her dad’s motto was that if you’re good at something, you’ll never have to tell anyone because they’ll already know.

She says he encouraged her and her siblings to be modest but aim high.

“He used to try to tell us that the kids had to succeed and achieve more than their parents had, and we always felt that was going to be a pretty high bar,” Parry Wickett says. “We all loved track and field day at my house, all my siblings, and if we ever were lucky enough to win something, any medals or ribbons had to stay at home because if you’ve done something well that was good, but you didn’t have to ever tell people about it.”

Dr Jack Parry was not only a record-setting high school and university athlete, he was also a Grey Cup champion with the Toronto RCAF Hurricanes in 1942, and a decorated World War II veteran.

Parry even went to the 1948 Olympics for track and field, but didn’t get to compete due to an injury he suffered while training.

“There should have been an Olympics previous to that, four years before, but the war was then,” Parry Wicket says. “By the time he could go, he was 27. When the bus pulled up to the Olympics in London, England to drop everybody off, there were huge craters they all had to jump over to get into the venue. It would have been quite something to see England after the war like that.

The annual honours recognizing the top high school student athletes in Chatham-Kent will be handed out this Thursday.