John Parken, the trial lawyer, died in 1995.
Three years later, a new John Parken was born — and along with him the noble purpose in life he’d been seeking.
Twenty-two years after that, the now accomplished Parken was chosen the 2019 Bald Hills Fire Department Volunteer of the Year.
This is his story:
John Parken needed a change.
He’d been a trial lawyer for nearly 20 years in Salt Lake City and by 1995 was burned out.
The then 42-year-old decided to retire early and move to Sugarloaf Key, Florida, where he figured his laid back lifestyle would jive quite nicely.
“My plan was to sit under a coconut tree and write the great American novel,” said Parken, who has an undergraduate degree from Colorado College in Colorado Springs and a law degree from the University of Utah. “I succeeded in sitting under the coconut tree, but the novel never happened.”