Z. Dean Parks

Zell Dean Parks finished two semesters of study at Whitworth College in Spokane, Washington before returning to his native Redlands area in 1955. The next year, he resumed his undergraduate studies at Redlands University, where, as a former high school football star (as well as a competitive swimmer), he was recruited as tackle for the Redlands University Bulldogs. Despite his popularity and success on the college gridiron, Dean's true aspirations lay in the field of education. So, at the end of the fall 1957 season, the 5-foot 11-inch, 210 lbs. senior played his last football game for the Bulldogs, concluded his Redlands course work, earned his undergraduate degree in May of 1958, and moved to Victorville to intern as a teacher for the Victor Elementary School District.¹

Soon after his internship in Victorville, Parks was accepted to a Master’s program in Education at the University of Southern California, where he was elected a member of Phi Beta Kappa and focused his research on reading problems and work study skills at two-year colleges, officially earning himself a M.S. in Vocational Education. With the completion of his Master’s in Education, Parks joined the English Department staff at Grossmont Junior College in 1964, which became the starting point for his career as a reading specialist.

At Grossmont, Zell Parks identified himself as "Z." Dean Parks, Chair of the Reading Department. True to his studies at USC, his bread-and-butter courses for the next twenty-five years would be in reading improvement. By 1968, Parks had already married and begun a family, and, in 1986, his wife, Margo, began working for Grossmont College as a secretary in the Financial Aid Department, which, for  a time, made Mr. and Mrs. Parks one of the most recognized couples on campus. Then, in 1990, suffering from an on-going heart condition, Parks stepped down from his leadership as Reading Chair and took an early retirement from the English Department, whereupon he accepted the status of Professor Emeritus but did not entirely give up on his interest in education and leadership.

By this juncture, Parks had already long served on a number of committees focused on improving faculty rights and teaching conditions, including a committee to design a Supplemental Insurance / Retirement Plan for the District’s teachers; his gradual transition to more dedicated administrative service to the District inspired him to run in 1992 for Trustee Seat #4 of the Grossmont-Cuyamaca College District Governing Board, to which he was successfully elected in November of that year.

The victory was to be brief, however. In fall of 1993, while vacationing in Italy with Margo, he collapsed of a heart attack and died. He was 58 years old. It was a tragedy to many who recognized in Parks, not only his fierce advocacy, but an irreproachable devotion to education. As colleague and friend Tom Scanlan writes in the October 1993 Grapevine, "Last November, when [Dean] made a broader personal commitment to serve as a board member, he knew that he had a serious heart condition. He agonized over whether or not to run for election. A deciding factor was the realization that if he didn't try, he might always regret not having done so... and he truly felt that he could make a significant contribution to our district by becoming a board member. There's no question in my mind that he made the right choice."

In response to the loss, the District worked expediently to fill the Governing Board vacancy, and on November 16, 1993, forty-five days after Z. Dean Parks's death, Victor M. Calderon, a 62-year-old former trustee on the board of Imperial Valley Community College District and a seated member of the Board of Directors to the Greater San Diego Chamber of Commerce, was installed to Seat #4 of the Governing Board. In honor of the late Trustee, Parks’s family and the Grossmont College Foundation set up the Z. Dean Parks Scholarship, awarded to full-time enrolled students pursuing a career in education.