 | | Benny Parsons is second from the right in the third row (light blue shirt). Mary Louise Canter is second from the right on the first row (in red blouse). Bob Kilby is behind Parsons (in coveralls). Credit: West Wilkes High School |
By Rick Houston, Special to NASCAR.COM
January 19, 2007
01:01 PM EST (18:01 GMT)
Slowly, sadly, members of the West Wilkes High School class of 1959 will gather from across the country this weekend to remember one of their own. They knew Benny Parsons, who died Jan. 16 due to complications with lung cancer, long before he thought of driving a racecar. They knew him as a good-looking, athletic and popular classmate. They knew him as class president and co-captain of the football team. They knew him in adulthood as a man who never forgot his humble beginnings. They knew him, period. Mary Louise Canter and her husband, Gene, had known Parsons for nearly 50 years. Bobby Kilby first met him a little more than a half-century ago. All three kept in close contact with Parsons through the years. Mary Louise and Bobby graduated from West Wilkes with Parsons in 1959, Gene a year before. Gene and Bobby played football with the future NASCAR champion, while Mary Louise, now a magistrate in Wilkes County, N.C., directed his wedding to first wife, Connie. After Connie passed away, she performed the ceremony with his second wife, Terri. "I went to work at a bank in 1960, and Connie, the girl he married, worked there," Mary Louise said. "She and I were really good friends. We had been cheerleaders together in high school. I encouraged her to write Benny in Detroit, and she started writing him. They had dated some, not anything real serious. "Then, when he married Terri, he called me one Sunday night and said, 'Will you marry me?' In the background, I could hear his mother and his sister laughing about that. ... So I performed the ceremony at the cookout on Saturday night before the race at North Wilkesboro that spring. ESPN was there, and they taped it." For all his popularity in high school, Gene Canter remembered Parsons as a "very humble person" who grew up with his great-grandmother in Parsonsville, N.C. His parents had moved to Detroit to find work, and while "Momma Julie" was good to him, times were tough. "A lot of people who know Benny don't have any idea where he came from, and how much he pulled himself up by his own bootstraps," he said. "The old house that he stayed in was very run-down, and in my opinion, Benny was ashamed to let people know what a poor situation he grew up in. "Many nights after a football game, we would take Benny home. It was one mile from the highway into his great-grandmother's house, and he would never let us take him to the house. We always had to let Benny out at the road. If it was midnight, it didn't make any difference. Benny walked home in the dark. He never let us take him to the door." Nevertheless, Parsons for years held annual get-togethers at the old homeplace the night before the Cup races at North Wilkesboro. At the time of his death, Parsons was building a home not far away. He was buried there as well. The place meant that much to him.  | "This, to me, is what made Benny Parsons one of the greatest men I've ever known. No matter how much fame or fortune he had, he still loved his home people. To me, that's a mark of a true man."
- Gene Canter
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Kilby met Parsons in August 1956, where they attended Millers Creek High School together before it was consolidated into West Wilkes. They were 15 and "pretty big ol' strappin' country boys." "We met on the football field," Kilby recalled. "He was a very likable person, but very aggressive on the football field. He would fight you for every inch. We were very similar physically, height and weight, at that age. We had some real good battles." The memories are almost too many to count for both the Canters and Kilby. While still in school, Parsons got his first broadcasting gig playing rock-and-roll tunes on Saturday afternoons for the local radio station, WKBC. There was the time Kilby and Parsons ate cherries off a tree for what seemed like an hour. On another occasion, Kilby and his father were taking Parsons home when they slid into a ditch. Parsons walked the few hundred yards to his home through several inches of newly fallen snow, while Kilby and his dad were forced to walk four miles back to their house. It wasn't the first time Kilby and Parsons experienced car trouble. "The roads were terrible back in the '50s," said Kilby, who now lives in Pawley's Island, S.C. "One Sunday afternoon, Benny and I got stuck in the middle of the road and couldn't get out. We walked for about a mile, to a real hillbilly of a guy's house. His name was Lindbergh Foster. It was a little ol' shack of a house, there on the side of the mountain, a whole bunch of little kids running around. "Lindbergh drove a school bus. We may have had 50 cents between us, but we conned Lindbergh into bringing the school bus out there to pull us out of the hole, the mud rut in the middle of the road." Many a night, Parsons stayed with Kilby and his family. After one particular football game, Kilby's mom made the mistake of leaving food unprotected from two ravenous teenagers. "My momma was a great cook, and she'd made a big ol' coconut cake," he said. "You're always hungry when you're 16, 17 years old. When my parents came down the stairs the next morning, there were four empty sardine cans and about half the coconut cake was gone. We had two cans of sardines a piece and about a quarter of a coconut cake each. I know it's nasty, but it didn't make any difference." Parsons remained unchanged through all the successes of his racing career, and class reunions were always a treat. One year when Parsons accidentally went into the women's restroom, his former classmates all gathered around to cheer his exit. Parsons made several trips to the Canters' Millers Creek, N.C., home to help plan for the 40th anniversary reunion in 1999. That year, Parsons arranged for his former classmates to enjoy a 1950s-style drugstore soda and ice cream fountain. He then picked up the entire $1,500 tab for the most recent celebration in 2004, the 45th anniversary of their graduation. "This, to me, is what made Benny Parsons one of the greatest men I've ever known," Gene Canter said. "He never forgot his home people. He never got above his home people. No matter how much fame or fortune he had, he still loved his home people. He came back. He visited with his home people. He would go to a restaurant right there above our house, sit down and it didn't make any difference who came in. They'd gather around Benny's table and he'd sit there and talk to them for an hour. "To me, that's a mark of a true man." Through the years, watching Parsons broadcast races on ESPN and then NBC and TNT gave the Canters a definite sense of connection to what they were seeing. "I think it was pride that I felt mostly," Gene said. "I was proud to have known that I played football with Benny, and knew what kind of a person he was. This has always been home to Benny, no matter where he was. He loved the people of Wilkes County." Parsons was diagnosed with lung cancer in July 2006, and news of his illness was obviously difficult for his former classmates to bear. Gene was looking forward to playing golf with him. Parsons had been building a new home in Wilkes County. He was building a vineyard. Mary Louise had led the drive for a stretch of nearby U.S. 421 to be named after him. Life was good. "It was especially hard for me, because my dad died from lung cancer in 1990," Mary Louise said. "It really hit me hard ... but I thought all along he was going to pull out of it. The treatment had supposedly taken care of all the cancer." Mary Louise had called in sick Jan. 16, one of the very, very few times in her life that she had done so. Kilby called her that morning with the news of Parsons' passing. "When I heard his voice, I knew why he was calling," she said. "It's a real good thing I was not at work. I'm thankful I didn't come in." "It's hard to believe he's not still with us," Gene added, "it really is." | 
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