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'Sheriff of Parsonsville' remembered
Neighbors watched out for Bill Parsons - and he for them
Photo Courtesy of The Parsons Family
Bill Parsons, a fan of Hank Williams songs, died Monday at 74.
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Published: September 11, 2008
PURLEAR
They will bury the "Sheriff of Parsonsville" today with his shiny badge pinned to his knit shirt.
It's unknown just how many people Bill Parsons pulled over during 30 years, riding his bicycle and blowing his whistle along the two miles between his parents' home and the small store near the Purlear Post Office. He would flap his arms, and people who knew him would stop.
"You better not speed, I'm watching," he would say.
The driver would invariably promise to do better.
Parsons would ride on, singing Hank Williams songs at the top of his lungs:
Good-bye Joe, me gotta go, me oh my oh.
Then he would see somebody else and blow his whistle again.
"Everybody in our community knew him, and they honored my parents by watching after him," said Parsons' sister, Madge Starr, who became his caretaker. "They'd say, ‘Oh, I better slow down.' It's wonderful being a small community and how the people treated him."
He was 74 when he died Monday of a heart attack. He had been off the road for years.
When his mother died in 1999, he wasn't able to stay by himself, and he moved in with his sister and her husband, Steve Starr, in Millers Creek.
Diagnostic tests then showed that Parsons had the mental capacity of a 5-year-old.
His family had always known, of course, that he was what people called mentally retarded, though they still don't know for sure if it was through birth trauma or genetics.
He was born in 1933 and grew up steeped in music as part of The Parsons Family, listening to his father, Reeves, brother Bud and sister Madge on their local gospel-radio show.
That's where his music talent came from, and he sang loud, "just like he was singing to God and everybody," his sister Madge said.
For 30 years, he would leave his dad and mom's house before sunrise on his gold three-speed bike, no matter the rain, sleet, snow or heat. He'd park his bike up at the post office.
If Doc Hayes -- the late physician Bill Hayes -- was working at his farm, he would take Parsons out to tend the cows or do other chores. If Hayes wasn't at the farm that day, Parsons would hang out at the store.
He always headed home at 4:30 p.m.
But it had been years since then. His family thought people didn't remember.
When Parsons had chest pains Monday, his family took him to Wilkes Regional Medical Center.
A doctor there asked them, "Is this the sheriff of Parsonsville?"
Parsons had his own question for the woman who did the EKG.
"Do you know a woman who can kiss good and make good corn bread?" he asked.
But his tests didn't go well. He was airlifted to Wake Forest University Baptist Medical Center in Winston-Salem.
On Monday afternoon, his nephew, Jeff Michael, saw that Parsons was fading and called WBRF-FM, the "Blue Ridge Country" station in Galax, Va., and asked them to play some Hank Williams music.
They waited and waited, through the other songs and the ads.
Finally, it came:
I saw the light, I saw the light, no more darkness, no more night….
And when the song ended, the sheriff of Parsonsville died.
It was 4:30.
"Bill went home," said his sister.
■ Monte Mitchell can be reached in Wilkesboro at 336-667-5691 or at mmitchell@wsjournal.com.
■ A graveside service for Billy Rufus "Bill" Parsons will take place at 2 p.m. today at the Blue Ridge Baptist Church cemetery near Idlewild off the Blue Ridge Parkway. He will be buried at the feet of his parents, Reeves and Ruth Parsons.
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