Sunday, November 3, 1996

Ex-pilot, G-Man recalls adventures

By ED PLAISTED
NEWS-JOURNAL STAFF WRITER

Quick! How many of you military veterans can find your old uniforms, much less fit into them? If you can, raise your hand.

Harold Parson can raise his hand. The former World War II Navy aviator not only found his lieutenant´s dress blues but he can wear the uniform.

“There are a few small moth holes and I had to take it Jacksonville Naval Air Station to have the gold braid redone,” he said the other afternoon at the DeLand Naval Air Station Museum. The bottom line, however, is that Parson will wear his old uniform to the fifth annual Airfleet dance Saturday.

Parson did have a hassle obtaining a new officer´s service cap.

“They were afraid I was going to impersonate an officer,” he said with a chuckle. “But finally the store manager said, ‘Give it to the old guy. He looks harmless.’ ”

“I’m not a war hero or combat pilot,” insists Parson. “I was simply an SBD dive bomber instructor.” An estimated 15,000 military pilots were killed in training accidents between 1941-45, including at least 34 at DeLand.

The fear of flying apparently didn´t deter Parson from leaving Stetson University in the middle of his education to join the Navy´s air wing.

“I went to Stetson because it was a Baptist school in 1941,” he recalled. “I was in the college glee club and sang in the First Baptist Church choir.

“One of my first college performances was at memorial service at the local station for a trainee killed in a crash. And it was while singing in the choir that I met Rabel Moremen. It was a cold January night and I loaned her my scarf. We still have that scarf.”

Before he was accepted by the Navy, he took Rabel to the Orange Belt Pharmacy where they sipped hot chocolate. While in flight school, he dropped her a postcard saying, “I certainly enjoined our drinks together. Hope to do it again soon.”

Rabel´s strict Baptist mother intercepted the card and, fearing her daughter had been drinking alcohol, grounded the DeLand High School coed.

During the war, Parson trained dive bomber pilots at Pensacola Naval Air Station. He admits that many instructors perished with their trainee pilots.

“The most heart-breaking experience happened in Pensacola the day after Japan surrendered,” he said. “An instructor was inspecting a student pilot when the plane lurched forward with the propellers whirling.

“A grounds crew member had failed to place the tire blocks securely and the instructor was chopped up like hamburger right in front of my eyes. I will never forget it.”

In 1946, he returned to finish his education at Stetson.

“Since I was married, I sought something less stressful than flying,” he said. “So I became an FBI special agent.”

Parson´s career as a G-Man is worthy of a movie plot or TV series.

He investigated communist and left-wing activities while assigned to Philadelphia, spies while in the Washington office and the Ku Klux Klan and labor thugs in Florida.

He ended his 22-year FBI career in 1974 as resident agent at Fort Pierce.

In the 1960s he was involved in the infamous Florida East Coast Railroad strike. One of the labor goons was the late Wesley ‘Barefoot’ Picket whom Parson captured trying to dynamite a railroad trestle near Vero Beach.

“He was a real good ol´ boy who wore overalls and always went barefoot,” recalled Parson. “He was always daring us to catch him.”

Although caught in the act, Picket beat the rap in two trials.

“I got to be on a first-name basis with him,” recalled the former agent. “He later made it to state prison on a drug rap. He died four days after he was released. His last request was that no one should wear shoes at his funeral.”

Parson was involved in a tragic stakeout in which an innocent bystander was killed in a shootout.

“We had surrounded the home of a fugitive when this man came running at us with a gun. He was drunk and apparently thought we were robbers. We called out that were FBI agents but he started shooting at us.”

While he was at Fort Pierce, the KKK burned a cross on the front lawn of his home.

“They also invaded my home, pistol-whipped my 13-year-old son, Nels, and ransacked the house,” he recalled.

Now the only excitement he´s seeking is a fast fox trot to the music of the Deltonans Saturday night.

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