After nearly 50 years, University of Puget Sound graduate completes his degree

Parker had entered Puget Sound as a biology major before switching to mathematics, and eventually settling on English. “I studied so many different things,” he says, “and each field had its own way of viewing the world. That flexibility of thought has been really valuable to me.” He was active on campus, playing for the soccer team and working as a photographer for the yearbook and The Trail, which led to him meeting Lokelani Kini ’76 while covering the Spring Lū`au. Life was moving fast, and within a few years, Parker was eager to move on. He and Kini were married, and Parker was working as a computer programmer at a local IT firm; he left Puget Sound one class shy of graduation.

For the next four decades, Parker enjoyed a career in IT and software development. In 2011, he retired, and he and Kini moved to Hawai`i to enjoy the good life. He spent his days on the beach, reading, working in his garden, playing Sudoku, and studying electronics. But soon, he grew bored with the island. He craved a challenge and set to work designing a database for event management.

“That was fun, so I made an event management application to go with the database,” Parker recalls. “No one knew I was writing this, but in an odd twist of fate, the moment I finished I got a call from a former client asking if I could write some event management software. I said, ‘You’re in luck.’”

At first, Parker tried managing the project from Hawai`i, but selling and supporting the software while dealing with a three-hour time difference was a headache, so he and Kini moved back to their house in Redmond, Wash., full time. After a few frenzied years, he started to wind down his second career and once again found himself with too much time on his hands. That’s when he decided it was finally the right moment to finish the degree he’d started half a century earlier.

“I suppose you could say I had unfinished business. It always bothered me that I’d never taken that final English class,” Parker says. “The opportunity to finish my degree—and to do something I know that I enjoy—and the chance to learn new stuff, was irresistible.”

So, he reached out to Krista Johnson in the Office of the Registrar to find out if he could still complete his degree. After digging through old transcripts, dusty copies of the Bulletin, and records on microfilm, Johnson confirmed that Parker was only missing one class. Then, she connected him with Professor of English John Wesley to get a list of courses that would satisfy the remaining credit. At the age of 66, Parker returned to the familiar North Tacoma campus to take a class on detective fiction. Instead of feeling out of place, Parker instantly felt connected to his instructor and fellow students.

“I wasn’t sure what it would be like to come back after all this time, but it doesn’t feel like any time has passed. It’s been so much fun to be back on campus.”

This spring, Parker graduates as a member of the Class of 2022 with a Bachelor of Arts degree in English, proving that it’s never too late to go back to school and pursue your education.

“I can't tell you how excited I am to actually finish up,” Parker says. “My maternal grandfather was a board member, and my parents, uncles, brother, and sister are all graduates of Puget Sound, so it’s really been the family college. Our family loves education, and we are all going to celebrate together when I graduate.”