HEMINGWAY TALE: Did Saginaw's Jack Parker Really Tell Papa His Books Stunk?

Advertising Guru Wrote Shipwreck Book, Recalled Brushes with Famed Writer

April 22, 2013
By: Dave Rogers

The scene is a bar in a Paris hotel.

The year 1947.

The players: Jack Parker, Saginaw advertising executive extraordinary, then a radio broadcaster in Europe covering the windup of World War II, and the legendary Nobel Prize winning author Ernest Hemingway.

PARKER: (not recognizing the big man, beardless at the time): "Just saw a movie, To Have and Have Not,"( based on Hem's latest book of the same name);

HEMINGWAY: (casually) "How'd you like it?

PARKER: (allegedly) "Well, I didn't like the book and the movie was worse. If you ask me, about all Mr. Hemingway sold the movie producers was the title of the story . . . and whatever they paid him was too much."

HEMINGWAY: (curiously) Didn't catch your name.

PARKER: "Jack Parker -- of ABC. What's yours?"

HEMINGWAY: "My name's Ernest Hemingway."

Parker later lamented: "I missed a beautiful opportunity to keep quiet. I saw him every once in a while after that and every time I did he'd grin and ask me if I'd read any of his books lately."



The yarn about the awkward meeting of the broadcaster and the author is recounted in Capt. Parker's 1986 book, "Shipwrecks of Lake Huron: The Great Sweetwater Sea," published by Avery Color Studios, Au Train, Michigan.

Parker died in 1984 but his book was published by his son, Philip S. Parker, two years later. Phil wrote the preface that amounted to a fascinating biography of his father.

Capt. Parker was born in 1916 and grew up in the Tawas area where he gained his love of the lake that escalated to yachting over 25 years, hence his honorary title, Captain.

The book aims to chronicle all the shipwrecks in Lake Huron since, well, the beginning of time, approximately 1,000. It includes Bay City's first vessel, the Esperance, constructed in 1788 by Louis Tromble, grandfather of pioneers Mader and Joseph Tromble.

Besides the intriguing summary of Parkers' life, the book contains a chapter on communications on the lakes stemming from the sinking of the Titanic on April 14, 1912, "a tragic accident destined to change the communications status of shipping everywhere," the book accurately states.

The Radio Act of 1913 requires all vessels carrying 50 or more persons to be equipped with ship-to-shore wireless and licensed operators.

Little gems of knowledge are included, including the wording behind the call letters of the first Great Lakes radio station WCAF, initiated by the Michigan Limestone and Cement Company out of Rogers City, a designation supposedly from "we're calling a friend."

Otto Sovereign's yacht Old Timer, stationed at the Saginaw Bay Yacht Club, made that club the first in the world, according to Parker, to house complete electronic ship-to-shore communications equipment.

Anecdotes about radio were, of course, natural for Parker, who was reared in Otisville and at age 15 became a part-time announcer at Flint's WFDF. He soon moved to Michigan State College in 1934, mainly because of radio station WKAR on campus, where he worked in addition to WJIM Lansing.

Graduation saw Parker becoming program director at WBCM in Bay City. During World War II Parker became capital correspondent of the statewide Michigan radio network and wangled assignment to Europe as a war correspondent.

ABC picked him up and on V-J Day our Mr. Parker had returned home to record jubilation of two million from New York's Times Square.

Executive at WSAM, founder of Parker Willox, Fairchild and Campbell Advertising and other experiences ensued.

Read the rest of Parker's life adventures plus the facts of Lake Huron's shipwrecks and other lore and you will be amazed; you can get the book on Amazon.

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