A Main Street Success Story

(July 30, 2008)  Murray, Kentucky's Main Street would not be the same without Parker Ford. Joe, John, and David Parker and the other good folks at Parker Ford have developed a well-deserved reputation for integrity, dependability and service. A Main Street mainstay since 1945, the business first opened in 1928, making 2008 the 80th anniversary of this continuous family enterprise.

Hafford Parker, the father of Joe and John and grandfather of David, opened up a repair shop across from the old post office (now the Robert O. Miller Conference Center) in 1928. The Parkers had gone north to Michigan, as had so many other Kentuckians in the 1920s. In fact, so many Kentucky “hillbillies” migrated from Paducah to Detroit that an area of the motor city became known as “Little Paducah.” Murrayans flocked to Detroit and other northern cities as well.

David's mother Charlotte Roberts was born in Dearborn and his father James in Highland Park. Although work was good for their parents, things were different up north. Folks talked differently, and “you couldn't get corn meal there,” a Kentucky staple back home. The Roberts and Parkers came back to Murray to stay before the Great Depression hit in 1929, Hafford Parker making a home for his wife and three sons - Joe, James (David's father), and John - at the northwest corner of 2nd and Poplar by the old hosiery mill.

All three sons served in World War II and then after the war they came home to Murray to farm a little and work in their father's repair shop, which by 1945 had added a Nash dealership and moved to its present location at Main and 7th. Hafford added a Nash showroom in 1946, and by 1950 the Parker dealership sold more Nashes than any other dealer in Kentucky.

By 1956, the year before Hafford died, the market for Nash automobiles had declined. David said that with the future of Nash “not very good,” the three Parker brothers, Hafford's sons, had to decide between Chevrolet and Ford. As they put it, “both points were available.” Although Hafford still felt a loyalty to Nash, the Parker brothers decided on Ford, when people kept telling them that “Ford people were good people.”

David began working at the new Ford dealership when he was 8 or 9. He remembered that he “just wanted to help around the shop.” He sold his first Ford when he was just 15 to Mrs. Laverne Wallis, the owner of a grocery on the corner of 3rd and Main. After graduating from Murray High, David went to Murray State where he completed a business degree, married Martha (with his father as his best man), and continued to work at the dealership. He became general manager of the business at age 20 in 1975. The dealership added Lincoln and Mercury in 1986 and kept growing. David's father James died suddenly in 1992, but David and his uncles carried on.

Now Parker Ford-Lincoln-Mercury continues to win awards for sales and service. “We've been blessed,” David says simply. Like his grandfather, David and Martha have three sons - Andrew, Stephen, and Matthew - all in college or headed for college. David, along with Martha and their mothers, and David's sister Beverly and her family, are all pillars in church and community. A keen student of history, David has befriended me, but then he has befriended countless others in Murray, Calloway County, and the region.

Parker Ford continues to anchor Murray's Main Street. And just think; it all started as a modest repair shop, founded in the Roaring Twenties, one year before the Wall Street Crash.

Eighty years old and counting, still serving as a Main Street success story.

Duane Bolin teaches in the Department of History at Murray State University. He may be reached at duane.bolin@murraystate.edu

Courtesy: Murray Ledger and Times