Rachel Ross Parmenter and William K. (Bill) Parmenter were partners in life for 63 years. Bill passed away on April 26, 2012, in Portland, Oregon. Rachel passed away in Portland on December 2, 2019, and it was her wish that both their lives be celebrated together.
Rachel Ross was born on October 27, 1925, in Bolenge, a small village on the banks of the Congo River, in what was then the Belgian Congo (now the Democratic Republic of Congo); or, as she always said, a half-mile from where the Congo River crosses the equator. Her parents, Myrta and Emory Ross, were missionaries in the Congo, along with Myrta’s brother Ernest Pearson and his wife (and Myrta’s good friend) Evelyn. The two couples raised seven children in the Congo, three Rosses (Rachel, Roger and Elizabeth) and four Pearsons (Mary, Paul, Patricia, and Barbara). Rachel remembers happy days as a child exploring her environs along the river, playing with Congolese playmates, and loving her pet monkey. The seven cousins would remain close throughout their lives. In 1933, the clan came home to the US, 11 people descending on “Grandpa” Pearson’s home in Eureka, Illinois. The Ross and Pearson elders would remain actively involved in Africa and African issues for decades to come. In 1936, Myrta and Emory moved with their three children to New York City. Young Rachel immediately fell in love with New York, growing up there, attending PS 81 and Friends Seminary. She loved exploring all the city had to offer. She was close to Times Square in August 1945 with her sister eating lunch when the radio announced that Japan had surrendered. They ran to Times Square and were among the first to arrive in the growing mass of humanity there celebrating the end of World War II. Her children always asked if that was her in the famous photo kissing the sailor - it wasn’t but she liked to keep them guessing!
Rachel chose to attend Oberlin College in Ohio in the fall of 1943, majoring in history and making friends she would keep for a lifetime. And it was at Oberlin, on Friday, November 22, 1946, that Bill Parmenter called late in the day to ask her to go to a movie that night. Rachel was mad that a boy could call that late and assume she’d be free, but also intrigued that “Pie” Parmenter, said to be the smartest guy on campus (a “nerd before his time” as Bill later described himself), was asking her out. She said yes. They later could not remember what movie they saw when telling their children this story. What they did remember was discussing the Nuremberg Trials, happening at the time, late into the night, having to take special permission to stay out past the curfew on the dormitory’s front porch. Whatever Bill had been thinking that evening when he called, he was clearly smitten with this young woman. Neither ever dated anyone else again.
Bill had grown up in Lakewood, Ohio, outside Cleveland, an only child raised by his father after his mother had left them when he was around 7. As his father moved them between rooming houses during the Great Depression, Bill took refuge in books, and especially history books. His aunts looked after his and his father’s welfare, providing a model of strong, smart, independent women which he appreciated all his life. He received a full scholarship to Oberlin in 1942, but was called up for military service in 1943. He served as a combat medic in the European theater, attached to the 71st Regiment of the 44th Division (later receiving letters of thanks from men he had saved). He was captured in December of 1944, in a prelude to an attack on Fort Simserhof near the French/German border, and, after a ride across Germany in a very cold dirty boxcar, spent the rest of the war in a POW camp (Stalag IIIA at Luckenwalde). Getting back to Oberlin in the fall of 1946 was a great joy (“this was the life for me!” he wrote later), and the greatest joy as he always said was meeting Rachel Ross.
After graduating, Rachel returned to New York as Bill prepared for graduate school at Harvard to get a Ph.D. in history. Many long distance discussions about their future lives ensued (expressed in near daily letters) as well as many visits between New York and Cambridge, Mass. Myrta and Emory loved and admired Bill, and they became like second parents to him, and their apartment at Gramercy Park his second home, and continued to be so until Emory’s death in 1973. Bill’s developing academic specialization in European imperialism and modern Africa fit in well with the Ross’s expertise in Africa and their promotion of African independence and anti-racism activities at home. When Emory Ross wrote 22 universities asking about graduate students who were expert in Africa, only one, Oberlin, wrote back saying they recommended a grad student named Bill Parmenter at Harvard – the young man Emory and Myrta already knew as their daughter’s boyfriend!
Rachel and Bill were married in New York City on April 2, 1949. After Bill’s desperate search for an apartment in housing-short Boston, they settled into a small apartment on the Radcliffe Quad, and Rachel started a job at Mass General working as a secretary for the psychiatrist, Erich Lindemann, who became famous for his research on grief. On their 11 month anniversary, Rachel and Bill got the news that Bill’s father had suffered a stroke, and so the young couple took him in as well. “Mr. P” would live with them though various apartments and houses until his death in 1954. They were soon joined by their first child, Bob, in 1951. Bill often expressed his amazement and appreciation of Rachel’s abilities to manage a growing family, work, moves, and taking care of an elderly father-in-law. Rachel remembers typing Bill’s dissertation, “The Congo and its Critics: 1880-1913” (multiple copies on carbon paper!) at a table she pushed up against the kitchen counter with baby Bob set on the counter-top, and toys on strings for him to play with tacked on the cabinets above him. Rachel’s resiliency – where there’s a will, there’s a way – showed itself early and often, and would continue all her life no matter the challenge. It clearly wasn’t easy, and she struggled many times, but whatever the problems she faced, she would always find a solution. A major part of her solution was to build and maintain a community of friends wherever she went, and to always be gracious to new people in her life, again something she continued to her death at 94. She was a believer in the old maxim, it takes a village – not just to raise a child but to get through life’s adversities and to make the most of its joys.
In 1952, Bill and Rachel moved to suburban Virginia where he started a position with the relatively new Central Intelligence Agency as a specialist in the African branch. He quickly became known as an excellent writer and synthesizer of information, and in the 1960s was in charge of producing the President’s Daily Brief, delivering it to the White House each night in an armed escort. He was deputy chief of the Middle East and Africa Division during the 1967 Arab-Israeli War and played a major role in the CIA's accurate forecast of the Israeli victory in the conflict (which persuaded President Johnson not to send US troops in). He was later promoted Director of that Division, and then to Director of Current Intelligence, and ended his career at the CIA as the National Intelligence Officer for Sub-Saharan Africa.
But as Bill often said himself, his “real” life was his family and community.
On Inauguration Day, 1952, Rachel and Bill finally found a home they could afford in a brand-new subdivision, Holmes Run Acres. In many ways it was a classic postwar suburban community (other than its modernist design, now dubbed “mid-century modern”), full of young 20- and 30-something year-old couples, veterans of the war whether in battle or on the home front, raising families. Bill and Rachel made more lifelong friends and added daughters Beth and Barbara to the family (born in 1953 and 1958 respectively). But like many other white suburban communities, neighbors were also at odds over racism and segregation. Rachel had come from a long line of civil rights activists and advocates for Black Americans. Her paternal grandparents had worked at the Southern Christian Institute in Edwards, Mississippi (a private boarding school of African Americans in the Jim Crow era), and her father had grown up there. Rachel’s parents had been active both internationally and domestically as allies of Black religious and civil rights leaders. Rachel and Bill joined a newly forming Congregational Church in Annandale, Virginia, that welcomed members of all races and joined hands with Black churches in Washington to advocate for civil rights. After the Supreme Court’s Brown decision in 1954 to ban segregation of schools based on race, Rachel organized in her community to prepare for a peaceful integration process, hosting neighborhood gatherings and playdates over the summer for Black and White children. Rachel and Bill were also leaders in arguing for opening up housing and the swimming pool to all races. This was a very tense time, and they and others arguing for integration in the neighborhood faced tremendous social pressure, especially Rachel as a stay-at-home mother. But she and others stood their ground and helped make this transition as peaceful as they could. Daughter Barbara remembers telling her mother that another little girl in her kindergarten was “bad” because her parents weren’t supposed to be married - her mother was Japanese American and her father was European American, and interracial marriages were still banned in Virginia until 1967. Rachel patiently explained that some laws were bad, not the little girl, and that we needed to work to change those laws. This was a revelation to five-year old Barbara that there could be bad laws and that we had to do something about them!
Bill and Rachel’s common interest in history and their love of car trips was another outstanding part of their and their children’s lives. Bill would do the historical research and plot the routes, while Rachel would create the budget, arrange lodging, and maintain accounts. A pretty happy couple to begin with, they REALLY loved car trips and instilled in their children a love of and awe at the country they inhabited.
Rachel and Bill’s service and activism continued through their lives. Rachel worked in countless ways through their church, schools, scouts (both Cub Scouts and Girl Scouts), and hospital. Bill followed her model, and as soon as he retired, also became an active volunteer. They rejoiced in their children’s’ partners – Bob’s wife, Cheryl, their son Shane, and later his wife Raylena and son Alex; Beth’s husband Al, and Barbara’s wife, Mary, and never tired of hearing about what the “kids” were up to. Having seen and fallen in love with the American West, and having their children all move west as adults, Rachel and Bill moved to Portland, Oregon, in 1989, starting a new era in their lives. They lived downtown and loved urban life. For Rachel, it was like being back in her beloved New York City again, with all the city noise and bustle that did not bother her in the least. For Bill it was walking to the wonderful public library and to Portland State for classes. For both of them, it was strolling to First Congregational Church, where they became active members, including helping to organize the church’s “open and affirming” initiative to welcome LGBTQ members.
In 2001, they moved across the Willamette River to Calaroga Terrace, a senior living community. Rachel dove into community-building all over again, and she and Bill treasured the friends they made there over the years. Countless Calaroga residents say that “Rachel was the first person who talked with me”, and their friendship supported her and Bill in turn. As health issues started to occur, they kept the same “we can handle this” resilient perspective, finding new “at home” initiatives and making shorter trips out and about, always discovering new things about the Northwest. Bill read even more history books and could still explain off the cuff just about any historical event happening in Europe from the ancient Greeks onwards to our own time. After Bill’s death in 2012, Rachel continued her sunny outlook on life, accompanying her children and her beloved “kids in law” on trips to the coast (she never tired of Yachats) or drives around the Portland region. In the few months before her death, she tooled around Astoria and Cape Disappointment, and discovered the joy of riding the Max light rail in a wheel chair to Washington Park. During her four weeks on hospice in November 2019, she relaxed in her recliner and talked about how lucky she was to have had such a wonderful life and an amazing friend and companion in Bill. Their family and friends will always treasure Rachel and Bill’s loving spirits and openness to life.
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