Hugh G. Parker Jr.

The Wyly Tower of Learning, named for the benefactors Sam Wyly and Charles Wyly, is the most prominent building on the Louisiana Tech University campus in Ruston, Louisiana. It was designed by Hugh G. Parker Jr., c. 1970.

Parker designed some fifty churches, including Calvary Missionary Baptist in Minden in Webster Parish.

Hugh Griffin Parker Jr. (July 25, 1934 – November 3, 2007) was an architect from Bastrop in Morehouse Parish, Louisiana. He contracted polio as a youth but survived and thrived as an adult. In his 45-year design career, he designed many public and private buildings, including government offices, churches and school facilities, most in North Louisiana.

Background

Parker was the son of Hugh Parker Sr. (1909–2007) and the former Jewel Flynn (died 1988), originally from Oak Ridge in Morehouse Parish. His surviving sister is Merrilee P. Rogers (born c. 1936) of Garland.^[1] In 1949, at the age of fifteen, Parker contracted polio. He was treated in New Orleans and had convalescence and physical therapy in Warm Springs, Georgia. In 1952, he graduated from Bastrop High School. He attended college at Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge, graduating with a degree in architectural engineering.^[1]

In 1963, Parker married the former Sarabeth Boughton (born c. 1943); the couple had two daughters, Sharon Lynn and Lee Anne.^[1] Sharon Lynn married Charlie Johnson and they live in Garland, Texas. Lee Anne married Clay McDonald and they live in Choudrant in Lincoln Parish.^[1]

Parker was active in civic life. He was a Paul P. Harris fellow of Rotary International of Monroe, Louisiana.^[1]

Career

Parker began practicing solo in 1959. In 1961, he joined the firm founded in the 1940s by the late Allen Turpin. The company went through transitions before it assumed the name "Hugh G. Parker Jr., Architect, Inc." in 1988 in Monroe.^[2]

Parker was particularly known for his design of government and educational buildings, churches, residential homes, financial institutions, and state parks, such as Lake Claiborne State Park near Homer, Louisiana. His best-known projects were the Monroe/West Monroe Convention and Visitors Bureau, the Wyly Tower of Learning at Louisiana Tech University in Ruston, and the football arena (Malone Stadium),^[3] the baseball stadium, and the activities center at the University of Louisiana at Monroe.^[4]

Parker designed the city hall and police station in Bastrop. He designed some fifty church buildings, including the Lea Joyner United Methodist Church and Trinity Lutheran Church, both in Monroe, the McGuire United Methodist Church in West Monroe, the Calvary Missionary Baptist Church in Minden in Webster Parish, and renovation and restoration of St. Joseph Catholic Church in Bastrop.

Parker worked for school boards on such projects as the gymnasiums for Morehouse Junior High School and his alma mater, Bastrop High School. He handled some fifty construction projects for various school boards in Ouachita, Claiborne, Richland, and Franklin parishes, as well as the Monroe City Schools.^[4] He also designed the Ouachita Independent Bank in West Monroe.^[5]

Parker was affiliated with the American Institute of Architects and the National Council of Architectural Registration Boards. In 2002, he was member of the regents of the Louisiana Architectural Foundation. Parker retired in 2004.^[1]

In 2006, Timothy Mark "Tim" Brandon (born August 1967) acquired the Parker firm and relocated it to West Monroe, with branch offices in Natchitoches, Louisiana, and Dallas, Texas.^[6]

Parker died in 2007 at the age of seventy-four. Services were held at the First Baptist Church of Bastrop, of which he was a member. Along with his parents, Parker is interred at Memorial Park Cemetery in Bastrop.^[1]

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