He coached President Dwight D. Eisenhower on championship football and baseball teams at Abilene High School, Kansas, between 1905 and 1909.
[1] He was a founder of the Peoples Federal Savings and Loan Association in 1923,[1] shortly after he served on a coroner's jury that found that an "illegal masked and armed mob, presumably instigated and directed by members of the K.K.K.
", caused the death of an Inglewood policeman during a 1922 raid by 50 to 200 men on a suspected bootlegger and his family.
[2] Parent was an early supporter of Mines Field, near Inglewood, as a site for a Los Angeles municipal airport, and he persuaded the planners of the National Air Races that the field would be the "best possible landing area" and they chose it for the 1928 event, which solidified public sentiment in favor of the location for the city's first airport.
As chairman of the Chamber of Commerce Aviation Committee, he helped bring Los Angeles International Airport and the first two National Air Races to Inglewood.