Salvationist

Edward Justus Parker, who looks like a freshly shaven Santa Claus, was having the time of his long life last week. Parker was retiring as National Commander of the Salvation Army, in which he had served for 58 years (longest service of any living Army officer). He found that retiring was a job that kept him busier than routine Army work.

At Janesville, Wis., the 74-year-old veteran re-enacted his first Salvation Army meeting, recalled with a chuckle that on his first appearance the local paper reported that "the cornet player [Commissioner Parker] was terrible." Then he went on to Elgin, Ill. for a big farewell. It was at Elgin that Parker, then a 16-year-old printer on the Elgin Daily News, first attended a Salvation Army open-air meeting, was so taken by the Salvationists' happy abandon that he joined up then & there.

The Salvation Army has come up in the world since then. When Commissioner Parker began his work, social service people considered the Salvationists as human refuse collectors, had slight use for the idea that the Gospel could rehabilitate a man. Not so Convert Parker. He got up early mornings to chalk Scripture texts on sidewalks. He drove brass-headed nails in the shape of large S's into the soles of his boots so that when he knelt in the streets people would be reminded of the Salvation Army. But some people were unregenerate. Mobs often stoned the Salvationists, threw rotten eggs, refuse. Says Parker reminiscently: "They had a lot of vitality mixed up with their sin."

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