IN REMEMBRANCE
JOSEPH C. PARKER, MD
August 1, 1937 – May 3, 2019
I
t is with profound sadness that we relay the news that Dr Joseph
Corbin Parker, Jr., died on May 3, 2019, after several years of
declining health. Known as “Joe” to his friends and colleagues,
he was a true Southern gentleman who lived an interesting life.
He was born in Richmond, Va., in 1937 to Alice Cabell Horsley,
an artist, and Dr. Joseph C. Parker, an academic obstetrician
gynecologist. After graduating from Thomas Jefferson High
School in Richmond, he was encouraged to attend the Virginia
Military Institute (VMI) by his father, who was a VMI alumni
himself. So in 1954, Joe was dropped off in Lexington, Va., at the
VMI barracks. VMI provides the students, all of whom are cadets,
a physically and educationally challenging environment with a
rigorous military component. After graduating from VMI in 1958,
number one in his class and winner of the first Jackson-Hope medal,
Joe was accepted into medical school at the Medical College of
Virginia (MCV) in Richmond. VMI also sent Joe to Richmond
with the rank of First Lieutenant in the US Army Reserve, which
he proudly carried with him until his honorable discharge in 1968.
When he entered medical school, Joe did not have a clear idea
of his medical specialty destiny. His father was a professor in the
Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology at MCV when Joe arrived,
and at some point during his medical career, his father discussed
considering a career specialty path similar to his own. Joe had a
great exposure to pathology while at MCV, working with autopsy
pathologists and the Medical Examiner’s Office. Joe fell in love during
medical school with his soon-to-be bride, the talented and lovely
Patricia Singleton, also a lifelong resident of Richmond. Patricia
was a student at William and Mary College in Williamsburg, Va.,
pursuing a degree in education. Joe and Patricia married in 1961.
Joe excelled in medical school just as he did in college, and he was
inducted into the Alpha Omega Alpha medical honor society prior
to graduating from MCV in 1962.
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LOUISVILLE MEDICINE
Joe’s career choice did not become clear to him during his senior
year of medical school, so in 1962 Joe and Patricia moved to Ann
Arbor, Mich., for Joe to embark on a rotating internship at the
University of Michigan Medical Center. But it was at the University
of Michigan where Joe realized he could answer more diagnostic
questions, and give more definitive answers, in the medical specialty
of pathology. In 1963, Joe and Patricia packed their small apartment
and drove to Rochester, Minn., where his pathology career began
at the Mayo Graduate School of Medicine/Mayo Clinic. During
residency, Joe and Patricia decided to expand their family and had
their first child, John R. Parker. Patricia embarked on her second
career, the exemplary wife and mother, which she will tell you is
her favorite job.
In 1968, Joe moved the family to Durham, N.C. for his second
and final year of neuropathology training at the Duke University
Medical Center. Joe stayed at Duke for a second year as an Assistant
Professor of Pathology, but he was intrigued by a position at the New
England Deaconess Hospital with an Assistant Professor position at
the Harvard Medical School. Joe always had high career aspirations,
and he decided to move the family to Lexington, Ky., when a position
at the rank of Associate Professor became available at the University
of Kentucky in 1971, where he was the Director of Neuropathology.
His second child, Nancy, was born in Lexington the same year. An
offer of Professor of Pathology enticed him to the University of
Miami, where he directed the neuropathology service for six years.
Joe then decided to pursue his growing interest in administration,
so he took a position at the University of Tennessee-Knoxville as an
Associate Dean and Chief Medical Officer. His passion and focus was
always pathology, so in 1986 he moved his family to the University of
Missouri - Truman Medical Center in Kansas City (UMKC) where
he was Professor and Chairman of the pathology department until
1992. While at UMKC, Joe helped start an accredited pathology