Marine Corps veteran William Parks stands with the service's Silent Drill Platoon during a Marine Week celebration in Murfreesboro, Tenn., June 3, 2025. Parks died June 5, 2025, at age 94. (Brynn Bouchard/U.S. Marine Corps)
A Marine Corps veteran of the Korean War who said he had joined the military at 15 spent some of the final hours of his life with active-duty Marines at a birthday bash for the service in his native Tennessee.
William Marvin Parks, 94, was a guest of honor at a June 3 celebration in Murfreesboro marking the Marine Corps’ 250th birthday. He mingled with troops and posed for photos.
At the celebration held that evening, Parks gave the first piece of birthday cake to Lance Cpl. Culver Switzer, a rifleman with the Silent Drill Platoon from Marine Barracks Washington.
The gesture is part of a tradition that symbolizes the passing of wisdom and experience from the oldest Marine to the youngest.
On the morning of June 5, he died unexpectedly, leaving “a legacy of service, courage, and unbreakable Marine spirit,” the service said in a Facebook post Wednesday.
Marine veteran William Parks, a 94-year-old who fought in the Korean War and survived the Battle of Chosin Reservoir, takes part in a Marine Week cake-cutting with Lance Cpl. Culver Switzer of the Silent Drill Platoon on June 3, 2025, in Murfreesboro, Tenn. Parks died two days later. (Brynn Bouchard/U.S. Marine Corps)
Parks participated in two of the most important battles of the Korean War: the amphibious landing at Incheon and the Battle of Chosin Reservoir.
More than a thousand American troops were killed in the latter, a two-week tactical withdrawal in late 1950 amid subzero temperatures. Thousands more were wounded or suffered frostbite.
During that battle, Parks volunteered to be the first to cross a makeshift bridge spanning a 1,000-foot drop. The bridge had been assembled from air-dropped sections, and Parks drove a bulldozer across it to prove it was safe.
“I was the guinea pig,” he recalled in an interview broadcast last year by WTVC-TV, the ABC affiliate in Chattanooga, adding that he would never have traded the time he spent as a Marine despite the harsh conditions.
Parks was wounded during his service in Korea the following summer and returned to the U.S., leaving the Marine Corps as a sergeant in February 1952.
“He learned a lot working beside those Marines that he took with him the rest of his life,” according to an obituary on the website of the Chattanooga Funeral Home–Valley View Chapel.
Parks was born in Chattanooga on Oct. 17, 1930. He told WTVC-TV that he had enlisted in the Marine Corps at 15.
“I was a big boy; I was tough. I had a few muscles,” Parks said of his teenage self.
William Parks, top row, second from right, poses with other Marines in an undated photo. Parks, who fought in the Korean War, died June 5, 2025, at age 94. (Parks family via Dignity Memorial)
Marine Corps veteran William Parks in an undated photo. A Tennessee native who fought in the Battle of Chosin Reservoir and the Incheon landing in the Korean War, Parks died June 5, 2025. He was 94. (Parks family via Dignity Memorial)
He married after leaving the military and had three children with his wife, Freida. He worked for much of his life as a union brick mason.
He also raised and trained champion show dogs and more recently resumed a passion for target shooting. He was an officer of the Chattanooga Rifle Club and looked forward to weekly pistol matches, attending one the day before he died, according to his obituary.
Parks also was active in the Marine Corps League, a veterans organization that promotes the service’s values and supports charitable causes.
He is survived by his children Tim Parks, Alethea Parks Thompson and Bill Parks; his grandchildren Erika Thompson, Preston Thompson, Sydney Parks and Brantlee Parks; and a great-grandchild, Jasmine Thompson.
In the WTVC-TV interview, Parks was asked what being a Marine had meant to him.
“You’re bonded and there’s nothing that you wouldn’t do for them,” he replied. “Once a Marine, always a Marine.”
