Profiles with Clay: Jason Parks

Editor’s note: Profiles with Clay is intended to provide information about those in the Fort Smith region who find themselves — purposefully or via promotion — newly engaged in a business or civic leadership role. Furthermore, they have demonstrated the capacity and willingness to improve some aspect of their community, and have expressed a desire for regional leadership that is more active, aggressive and accommodating. The profiles will be posted on the second and fourth Mondays of each month.

story and interview by Clay McKinney

Jason Parks, 33, is not the type who likes to talk about himself, but eventually relented to an interview in the hope this article would prompt more of those under 40 to become more involved in the region.

Parks has been a part of the family business since childhood. Parks Brothers Farms, started by his father and uncle in the 1960’s, has become the largest wholesale greenhouse operation in Arkansas. They supply plants to garden centers from Texas to Tennessee and Louisiana to Kansas. The company now encompasses more than 700,000 square feet in production space. That’s a lot of plants. Jason has even brought greenhouses into cyberspace with a blog and a Facebook page dedicated solely to the world of plants.

Being unfamiliar with anything related to gardening, I knew this was going to be educational. For example, I never knew there was a difference between a greenhouse and a nursery (please, hold your laughter). Apparently, a nursery specializes in shrubs and trees, whereas a greenhouse grows a variety of smaller plants. But that was just the beginning of my education. I learned about a person who has beaten great odds just to be here today.

Jason’s limp serves as a reminder of his fight for life in high school. Following his junior year, Jason was diagnosed with an extremely rare type of cancer, rhabdomyosarcoma.
There are several types of this cancer but his was the rarest. It was in his hip and leg. As a 17 year old, Jason was faced with a decision most of us wouldn’t know how to handle as an adult. The doctors recommended amputation but Jason opted for an aggressive regimen of radiation and chemotherapy at St. Jude’s hospital in Memphis.

He received his final treatment on his 18th birthday and was victorious in his fight. Jason said he was the lone survivor of seven ever diagnosed with this specific type of cancer.

Due to the cancer treatment, Jason missed a good portion of his senior year. Undeterred, he received his GED and scored high enough on his ACT to garner a scholarship to Westark College (now the University of Arkansas at Fort Smith) where he graduated in 1996 with a business degree.

He’s planted a lot of community roots since that time.

Jason is a board member of the Van Buren Chamber of Commerce as well as the Arkansas Green Industry Association. He is a 2004 graduate of Leadership Crawford County and serves as the Chairman of the Crawford County Emergency Planning Committee. Jason is also a member of the Community Emergency Response Team and serves as first responders during a natural disaster or catastrophic event.

Unrelated to this team, Jason helped organize a group he called the Storm Response Team. This group consists of volunteers from several local churches who handle situations that are not considered emergencies but vital nonetheless. For example, an elderly person is homebound due to a storm. This team would deliver medication or meals until they are able to venture out on their own. Jason and his wife, Becky, are members of the Pleasant Valley Church of Christ.

THE INTERVIEW
Clay McKinney: What would you say a young leader’s role should be in our region?
“I think young leaders just need to be involved. Their role doesn’t matter, just be involved. You can’t effect change without being involved. There are a lot of people content to sit on the sidelines and gripe about what’s going on. But then, at the same time there are probably a lot of people who either were involved or tried to get involved but couldn’t find their niche. I was lucky to find my niche.”

CM: Some might say there is an underlying ‘old vs. young’ theme around here. Do you believe it exists and what are your thoughts on bridging this gap?
“I think in anything there is an element of young versus old. Whether it’s in a community or a business, or any kind of organization, there are people who were there first. They have been doing things their way for a long time. And there’s always going to be others coming in with new ideas.

“I think a lot of people my age and younger are spoiled and used to getting things their own way and once they got out into the real world they didn’t get their way and their way of dealing with it was to whine about it or cry about it instead of trying to see both sides.
Then there’s also probably a lot of the older crowd maybe didn’t listen to what they had to say. It really comes down to communication. The powers that be should listen to the ideas of the young but also the young should learn to listen and gain wisdom and experience from the older generation.”

CM: A lot has been said over the past few years about the importance of keeping young professionals in our region and its pivotal role in the future success of our region, what are your thoughts on this?
“My first thought is: who cares? What difference does it really make? I’ve heard the argument that we need to keep more people here, but why? I don’t understand the reasoning. You’ve got to have the jobs. You’ve got to have the industries. You’ve got to have the infrastructure. You’ve got to have the community in place that people want to be a part of.

“Whether it’s the young professional crowd or the older professionals, you’ve got to have the jobs for them to be here. That’s what it boils down to, to retain them you’ve got to have the jobs. But at the same time, I think they (the younger generation) ought to go to other cities and learn something new, learn something that you can bring back here that would help to improve this community.

“For every group that’s moved away there’s a group that’s gone away that say ‘There’s some criteria here that I’m looking for in a community, this community has it’. They’ll say ‘I don’t want to raise my kids in Chicago schools. I want something better,’ and I think Van Buren and Fort Smith have that. They have good school systems, houses are reasonably priced. But in my opinion, it shouldn’t really matter. If kids want to stay, they’ll stay. If kids want to move away, they’ll move away. Trying to entice them to stay, I don’t think hurts or helps. Just like one of us moving to Dallas, there is someone in a smaller town that wants to move here (to a larger city). It might be about marketing, marketing to the right people in the right places. Personally, I don’t think it makes a difference whether they stay or go.”

CM: How do you envision our community when the next generation is in your position?
“The only thing I would say on that is; I’m sure we will have screwed something up that needs to be fixed by then. I’m sure there will someone from the next generation that comes in and there will be the same problems and we’ll be doing it the same way and be resistant to change. I hope we’re not, but we’ll be on the other side of the fence by then.”

CM: Some believe that young leaders need to be active in the political arena in order to bring about change. Do you believe this to be the case?
“If you want to make a political change, yes. I, personally, am not good at being political. All politicians are the same they just have different agendas. I think I am a good example of what you can do without becoming involved politically. To say that you have to be in politics or hold an office to bring about change, I don’t agree with that.”

CM: Some say the young leadership groups within our community are simply social groups and that they really don’t have a productive function. What is your reaction to those who say this?
“I can only comment on what I’ve seen from the outside. My only question is: ‘What have they done?’ In the last 5 or 10 years, what tangible benefits have the groups contributed to the community? If they’ve done something, they should be able to point to it and say, ‘Here’s what we’ve done. We’ve gotten results, we’ve set goals, we’ve got an agenda, we’ve effected these changes.’ If it’s a group that has a goal and an agenda that hasn’t done anything, then, yes, it’s probably more of a social group. But I also think any group has to have a social aspect.

“For example, in Leadership Crawford County, we had an agenda and had things we wanted to do but we got to develop friendships. My mentality is if it’s not a lot of fun, if you can’t make it fun, then why try to do it? If it can’t be fun then you don’t really want to do it. But to answer your question, I would say that anybody that makes that claim against any group, the group ought to be able to say, ‘These are goals we set for this year, these are the goals we’ve met. We’ve done something.’ If they haven’t done something then they probably are just a social group. But there’s nothing wrong with that, its networking, its meeting new people and sharing ideas, even if it is just a social group, just getting together and talking about certain topics can be productive. So even if it’s just social, it can still be beneficial.

CM: Is there anything else you would like to add? Any changes you would like to see?
“There is so much of an ‘us versus them’ mentality in the River Valley, especially city versus city or county versus county. That seems to be the biggest obstacle that people our age, that I’ve spoken to, see. We don’t understand why these groups who are in charge keep insisting on butting heads instead of trying to work together. There seems to be more of a ‘Let’s work together’ mentality in people our age than in the old school.
I think there are a lot of people on both sides of the river who are willing to work together but with a history of not getting along, they feel they are just spinning their wheels and if they think something is not going to happen, it doesn’t happen. The younger generation doesn’t have the prejudices that stem from past differences and I think they can help bridge the gap.”

CM: If you were “King for a day,” what one thing would you change about our region, and why?
“I wouldn’t want that much responsibility. A more serious answer would be to snap my fingers to make everyone do what they are supposed to do without getting sidetracked by all of the frivolous stuff. The politicians do what they are supposed to do, community leaders lead the community instead of being more concerned with power, and I think a lot of the people involved with many of the local organizations are involved simply for the influence and prestige that comes with it. They don’t really care to help they just want to be part of the prestige.”

About Clay
Clay McKinney is a graduate of the University of Tennessee at Knoxville. He’s lived in Fort Smith since 1999 with his wife and two daughters. His short story, “Duplicity,” placed third in the National Writer’s Association Short Story contest in 2007. He’s working on a book with an attorney friend about an arbitration case against the New York Yankees.

You can reach Clay at [email protected]