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Kay’s grandfather emigrated from Ireland, and when he had saved enough from his job with the New York subway system, he and his wife bought a small hotel in Sea Cliff. In 1927 he and Kay’s father built the house Kay grew up in on 14th Ave. Like many Americans of that time, they sensed a good investment in Long Island’s growth and bought a lot farther out on the North Shore in Southold where Kay and her family would spend many vacations.
The narrow streets in the center of Sea Cliff with their houses large and small created a thick Mulligatawny soup of families and children and the Parks family was in the middle of it on 14th Avenue. With Central Park and its canopy of red oaks and tulip poplars next to the Youth Center and a few blocks from the beach and from stores, and with Central Avenue being one of the preferred sledding streets, kids had everything, including close bonds with each other. Bob Platt’s family lived across the street and invited her and sister Ginny over every Tuesday night to watch the Milton Berle show on one of the first televisions in the area. “My parents just gave in and bought us a black and white Dumont tv.” Her family “lived from pay check to pay check” and when they had guests coming, her mother went to the Royal Scarlet grocery on the corner of 12th and Roslyn Avenues and asked Coach Ray Conlin’s father and mother, the proprietors, to sell them food on credit, and they did.
Kay’s real love was roller skating, and as soon as she saw skate dancing, that was for her. “When I was 15 the only thing I wanted for Christmas was white shoe skates.” She has a picture of herself with the box and the skates held high. Despite a limited family budget, her father took her to Mineola for lessons. One reason she did not date much in high school were those trips to Mineola and the Friday night Mineola Swing for skate dancers. The other reason was that on many weekends the family packed up and drove to Southold to work on the summer cottage her father was building—a project inspired by Richard Robson’s family that already had a cottage there. “Another reason I didn’t date,” Kay says, “is because we disappeared on the weekends to go to Southold to help my brother build the house. Besides, I liked going out with groups. The more the merrier. Safety in numbers.”
In one of those unexpected chain of events, the arrival of Guy T. Pinkard as our biology and chemistry teacher changed Kay’s post-graduation plans. Mr. Pinkard had started a biology exchange program between his old school in Milltown, Alabama and ours. He had taken four of us to Alabama in ’55 to meet students there. Our senior year, one of those students, Wayne Roberts, came to Sea Cliff. He and Kay married in November after he had joined the Air Force. During his service they lived at Ft. Monmouth, NJ, then Japan for eighteen months. In Japan Kay worked at the US Army hospital as secretary to the Chief of Personnel. She was in that post when a US jet hit an Okinawan school and dozens of burn victims were brought in by chopper. Kay and Wayne’s daughter Dawn was born in Japan 18 1960, the same year they returned to America. Three years later they were divorced. Kay loved medical terminology and continued in her career as a transcriptionist for a variety of doctors from orthopedic docs to brain surgeons.
When her daughter graduated from high school in ’78 Kay said to her, “If you don’t want to go to college, I’m going to go.” She worked nights to pay her way through Florida Southern University, sharing her transcriptionist job with a friend who worked days. Her last semester in ’82 she attended Richmond College in London to study archeology and English. She graduated Cum Laude. Her daughter Dawn went to college later and graduated Summa Cum Laude with a double major in math and engineering. She works with Lockheed in the Apache program, specializing in target acquisition systems.
Before that Dawn had acquired a new father. Kay was living in a rented place in Orland and says her landlady couldn’t wait to introduce her to a single neighbor who was a full time member of the Florida National Guard who .”knew that we were meant for each other.” She says she had found “a jewel.” She married George Rice in November ’66 and moved into their new home between downtown and the airport, and soon to be a half hour from Disney Land. George adopted Dawn Marie.
Kay continues to work part time for two commercial real estate companies who agreed to let her have summers off to spend with George at the Parks’ family cottage in Southold, Long Island. At the cottage they enjoy swimming, rowing and paddling their two kayaks as well as reading and gardening. Kay says she was particularly surprised and pleased when Pete and Carole Muttee asked her to spend a night with them so she could attend the reunion on her way back to Florida. Since they had not seen each other in 50 years, “They no idea whether I was an ax murderer.”
Kay Parks Rice
2617 Lando La.
Orlando, FL. 32806
Kathle5195@aol.com
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