Virginia "Ginny" Parks

Like sister Kay, Ginny formed her first close friendships in their 14th Avenue neighborhood and nearby, but often they were different friends than Kay’s, and the sisters went quite different ways in school and afterward. Ginny and Pat Mills spent a lot of time together in grade school and on into high school, studying together, walking around town, listening to Rock ‘n Roll and classical music. Ginny also recalls playing hooky with some of the boys. She excelled at the clarinet and Mr. Ryder came to her home to give private lessons. Clarinet was his instrument and he enjoyed playing with another clarinetist. Neighbors and passers-by remarked on the well played popular music flowing from the Parks house. Ginny also took lessons in sewing from her mother and a professional. In Mrs. Scudder home economics class she produced a pair of slacks and lined black corduroy vest so well done Mrs. Scudder did not believe it was her work.

The Marching Band often included 14th Avenue on their parade route and Ginny enjoyed seeing her mother and father and the neighbors on the porches and in their yards waving encouragement. In general, Ginny seems to have enjoyed a festive crowd whether it was assembled for the Marching Band or to go sledding on the family toboggan when snow covered nearby Central Avenue. She recalls the faces in the sledding groups—Richie Loftus, Eddie Capobianco, Allan Schwartz and several others.

Dobkins Pharmacy’s soda fountain was a natural place for a sociable girl to work, although she says that she began without knowing how to mix sodas. She recalls, as I do not, that the author of this piece who had spent many hours hanging out at the fountain and watching the girls mix sodas gave her instructions.

Ginny, of course, enjoyed summers at the family’s Southold cottage which her father had built when she was about nine. One year she learned to water-ski there after she bought a speedboat from Abbey Hawes and had her father tow it out to Southold. Her social life in Sea Cliff was also often lively. She found some satisfaction in her “mad crush” on Richie Robson when he turned to her for a party date to avoid a girl who also had a crush on him. She describes herself, Annette Caselli, Gail Capobianco, and Fred Burns as “the 4 Musketeers” in their various sojourns. Annette’s parents, she says, were quite strict, but both worked and before they came home the musketeers would slip in and “have a few drinks,” which for Ginny one day became a few too many Crème de Cacaos and Fred having to dispose of the emptied bottle. They also haunted Frank’s Alibi in Hicksville for its Italian food. She says she was also smoking two packs of cigarettes a day.

Her notably bad binge should be paired with a notably good drink. After school Ginny’s friend Cynthia Turnbull got her a job as a filing clerk at Sperry. Cynthia, who made travel reservations at the company, also convinced her to vacation jointly in Mexico. Over champagne on the plane Ginny met a man going to Mexico to see a teacher friend there. When she returned to the states he called and “pestered me.” She married Clyde Schrempp, a mechanical designer, in May 1963.

With her daughter Karen on the way in 1965 Ginny gave up work and smoking. Son James arrived in ’68, Ginny used the embroidery and sewing talents she had learned in Sea Cliff and began producing Barbie Doll clothes and which became the subject of a Newsday article. She also sewed and embroidered communion dresses. Most of the work she did for her own enjoyment, but she also occasionally sold on the Island. Clyde’s work took him to Grumman, to Electric Boat in Connecticut and for most of the time to a Hicksville manufacturer of cases and containers.

Fifteen years ago Ginny and Clyde moved to North Carolina when he took early retirement and needed to wear a pacemaker. The kids had grown up and gone out on their own and Long Island taxes had grown but would not leave. Near Hendersonville they built their own custom home and found their community of Etowah “a little Long Island” with so many northern transplants. In 2008 they moved to a senior community in nearby Fletcher, NC. Ginny continued to enjoy her flower gardening and her herb growing. Her son James became a mechanic and carpenter in Roanoke, VA. Her daughter Karen has been with the New York City police, married to another policeman. Ginny came to love the small towns and mild climate of Carolina as well as its beaches and says, “I don’t think I could ever go back to LI.” In 2008 a tumor began growing in Clyde’s brain and he was buried on January 29, 2009. They had led a quiet and uneventful life in Carolina. “We just enjoyed our retirement years.”

Virginia Parks
128 Foxtrot Path
Fox Glen
Fletcher, NC 28732-7020