For Dr. Roger Parkes, what started as a simple, 20-minute job picking up litter has turned into an all-out effort to improve the Briarwood Drive commercial corridor.
Parkes, a periodontist, has formed the West Briarwood Beautification Initiative.
The Ole Miss and Baylor University graduate has worked tirelessly in the effort, meeting with local business owners and managers to talk to them about the importance of beautification and landscaping.
The effort has paid off. “I started driving down the street and realized it looks great,” he said.
Parkes points to improved landscaping in front of the Wind River office complex across from his office at Oak Park, as well as the improved appearance of the Family Dollar store next to it.
Patrons to the Family Dollar likely have noticed the difference as well, especially when it rains.
“Every time it rained, there would be four inches of water in the parking lot. I knew because they had a parking lot, they had to have a drain. We couldn’t find the drain and we realized they put the Dumpster over it,” he said.
The receptacle was moved, the drain was cleaned out and water no longer collects there.
Parkes began working on beautification a couple of years ago, after a longtime neighbor at the Oak Park office complex, an endodontist, told him he was moving out.
“He said, I’m moving out because of all the garbage on the street and in the woods.’ I got a bag and a stick and bagged it up and it took about 20 minutes,” Parkes recalled.
“It was good exercise and I enjoyed the way it looked.”
Even though his neighbor moved, Parkes said the efforts have been a success.
He’s also gotten to know other professionals, church officials and residents in the area – something he wouldn’t know had it not been for picking up trash.
“You get out of your car and you meet guys who you’ve never met before,” he said. “They started asking me for money, so I hired them. They get the money and I get the street cleaned up.”
Parkes, a graduate of St. Joseph Catholic School, attended the University of Mississippi on a football scholarship. During his time there, he played under head coach Billy Kinard and helped the Rebels to a 10-2 season and a win in the Peach Bowl.
After college, he became a member of Ole Miss’ School of Dentistry first class.
He was initially planning to become an orthodontist like his father, Robert. However, he was encouraged to become a periodontist at the urging of Dr. Wallace Mann, the dean of the dental school at the time.
“We became friends and he said, why don’t you become a periodontist?” he said. Mann helped him get accepted into the College of Dentistry at Baylor University. The Texas university was accepting three people into the periodontal program, which was a relatively new field at the time, Parkes said.
“I graduated dental school, took the board here, partied that Friday like it was 1999; the next day, I drove to Texas with my U-Haul and started periodontal school that Monday,” he said. “I was there three years.”
Parkes is certified to practice dentistry in Mississippi and the Lone Star State. He was inspired to seek the Texas certification after taking the ribbing from a fellow Baylor classmate.
“One guy from Chicago always made fun of me for being from Mississippi. One day, “I said let’s both take the Texas Board, which is harder than the one in Mississippi,” he said. “I passed it and he didn’t. I never heard another word out of him.”
After periodontal school, he stayed in Texas for a while, before traveling to Madrid, Spain, to teach dentistry there.
Parkes is fluent in Spanish, having picked up the language as a child in Honduras. After his father was drafted into the U.S. Air Force, he and his mother, Sue Block Parkes, moved there to be closer to her parents.
“Her father worked for United Fruit Company. She was born and raised in Honduras,” Parkes said. At 14, his mom was sent to Los Angeles to become a nun.
After four years, Sue decided she didn’t want to become a nun, and went to Ole Miss on scholarship. That’s where she met Robert, Parkes said.
Today, Sue lives in Arkansas and is 92 years old.
Parkes has two children, Kennett Brown Parkes, a dentist in Nashville, and Liza Jones, a yoga instructor at the Alluvian Hotel in Greenwood.
He set up practice in Jackson in 1983, at Stadium Towers.
In 1987, he moved to Briarwood, in the same building he’s in today.
In addition to his practice, Parkes likes to travel and previously was a follower of the late Ben Wren, a Jesuit priest who taught Zen Buddhism meditation.
Those teachings have helped him make it through the COVID-19 outbreak. “It taught me so much about how to live in the present, not to watch TV, not to think about what I’m going to do in 10 minutes,” he said. “It creates a mental and spiritual balance that everyone is trying to achieve.”
Recently, his practice invested some $40,000 in the facility to make it safer for patients during the COVID-19 outbreak.
Just like he’s investing in his practice, the longtime periodontist hopes his work with West Briarwood will inspire owners along the North Jackson roadway to make improvements to their properties.
As part of his initiative, he has purchased trash pickup sticks for numerous businesses, including the Northside Sun. He also has plans to begin recognizing business leaders for maintaining their properties.
“Seventy percent of my clients aren’t from Jackson. They come from all over Mississippi,” he said. “When they get off the bridge, I want them to think they’ve come to a place that has something going on.”
