Parks served in the U.S. Army from 1861 to 1929 by working as a grave digger and maintenance man for the cemetery.

At the time the article was written, the Department of Agriculture was in the process of uprooting the sacred ground for a farming area.

[1] At the time of his death he left behind one of the few slave accounts on record from which much of the restoration of Arlington House was based.

His testimony provided a complete record of the people who inhabited the plantation, the slaves and the Custis-Lee family.

[1] When Parks died on August 21, 1929, the Secretary of War Dwight Filley Davis granted special permission for him to be buried at Arlington National Cemetery with full military honors.