Collecting The Prize

Cooperative Living�s oldest-issue contest winner, avid collector Charles �Lewis� Parks proves the old adage that one man�s trash truly is another man�s treasure.

by Laura Emery, Field Editor 

It was a windy afternoon on the small island of Tangier nearly 20 years ago.     

Charles �Lewis� Parks, then in his early 20s, was riding his bike down Tangier�s narrow streets when he saw something that made him stop to take a second look � the local landfill.

There were sheets of paper dancing in the gusts of wind, and the sound of them fluttering haphazardly could be heard from some distance away. �I saw the papers blowing everywhere, and curiosity made me stop to check it out,� Parks explains.

As the saying goes, one man�s trash is another man�s treasure. Parks stumbled across an old issue of Rural Virginia, the precursor to Cooperative Living, dated July 1948. The headline read: �Youngest Electric Cooperative in State a Year Old: More Than 200 at First Annual Meeting on Tangier Island.�

Being an avid collector and one who appreciates anything having to do with Tangier�s history, Parks took the paper home with him.

At the time, Parks had no idea that 20 years later this old issue would make him the winner of a reader contest to find the oldest issue of Cooperative Living. �I read the magazine all the time, but I was surprised when I got the phone call saying I had the oldest issue,� Parks, a Richmond resident, says. �I kept the old issues because I am interested in anything relating to Tangier.� Parks is employed by Flooring Unlimited in Chesterfield, where he has worked for a year. He lives with his parents, Sam and Vivian Parks.

Parks was born in Richmond, but his family is from Tangier Island � a place where breathtaking sunsets are an everyday experience, the Chesapeake Bay waters glisten in the sun, and the natives have a distinct Elizabethan dialect representative of the island�s original English settlers.

�I used to stay on Tangier during the summers as a kid, and I moved back there when I got out of the Army in 1988. Tangier is a great place. I always enjoyed being over there,� he says. As a child, Parks would work in his uncle�s grocery store, Haynie Grocery, on the island. �People who have been here and seen my collection say I have the largest collection of things from Tangier,� he says with pride.

His fascination with collecting antiques started at the young age of four. �I would collect bottle caps, matchbooks, and gum wrappers as a kid. Now, I collect anything and everything,� he says, with a smile. �I�ve found some really cool stuff over the years too.� Parks has collected so many items over the years that he eventually ran out of room, and had to sell a lot of them. �I just couldn�t hold onto all of it,� he says.

Parks collaborated with local writer  Kirk Mariner to provide old photographs for his book, God�s Island: The History of Tangier. �A lot of the old photographs I�ve collected over the years got included in the book, which I thought was nice,� Parks says.

Although Parks was featured, at the age of 14, in the Richmond Times-Dispatch, his collecting adventures have never landed him on the cover of a magazine. He says, �I almost didn�t enter the contest, but I�m glad I did now.�

Thanks for the Memories

We received many entries for our oldest-issue contest � but even more special to us were the comments we received from many of you.

For example, 83-year-old Margaret Fitzgerald of Waynesboro said that she has collected 102 issues over the years. She wrote, �I enjoy reading my Shenandoah Valley Cooperative Living. I had them all from 1969  ...  in 1985 my home burnt from lightning. I lost my magazines. Then, my husband became ill and the cleaning lady always destroyed my magazines.�

The Spotsylvania Historical Association wrote in saying that a 1962 Rural Virginia publication showed up in the Spotsylvania County museum. The letter read, �We thought you would like to know that somebody cared enough to preserve your magazine by donating it along with some other items to our organization.�

George Moltz of Culpeper wrote about his 1971 issue of Rural Living: �I saved the magazine because it contains a story about the school at which I taught and contains a picture of me and one of my students. I have the entire magazine and enjoy looking at it now because of the memories it brings back.�