Necrology

Douglas Morris Parrott '49

Jul. 16, 1927-Aug. 17, 2019

Douglas Morris Parrott ’49, a Presbyterian minister and professor emeritus of religious studies of Riverside, Calif., was born on July 16, 1927, in Utica, N.Y., a son of the former Helen Morris and William Parrott, a manufacturer. He was raised in Stamford, Conn., and graduated from Stamford High School.

Parrott focused his studies in English literature and philosophy at the College. He was a member of Squires, the Charlatans, College Choir, and the Student Christian Association, for which he served two years as president. Elected to Phi Beta Kappa, he received the Babcock Philosophy Prize before earning a master’s of divinity in 1952 and a master’s of sacred theology in 1965 from Union Theological Seminary in New York City.

Parrott served as a Presbyterian minister in Cold Spring, N.Y., and Ringwood, N.J., before pursuing an academic career. In 1965, he moved to California, where he earned a Ph.D. in 1970 from the Graduate Theological Union at Berkeley. From 1968 to 1971, he was part of an inter­national team of scholars who translated fourth-century Gnostic writings found in a jar in 1945 near Nag Hammadi in Upper Egypt. The impact of Gnosticism on early Christianity became a research interest, according to a published obituary.

In 1971, Parrott joined the religious studies department at the University of California at Riverside, where he taught courses on the Hebrew Bible and New Testament, and the history of Christianity and Islam. He was committed to social justice and participated in the March on Washington in 1963 where he joined the throngs to hear Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech.

Known to carry a worn copy of the Constitution in his back pocket wherever he went, Parrott loved opera, films, and the L.A. Dodgers. He was legendary for his buttermilk pancakes, dry wit, sharp mind, and compassionate spirit, the obituary noted. He credited his alma mater with opening up new worlds. “Hamilton was like experiencing the Enlightenment all over again. It’s not that everything that had gone on before was darkness, but it all seemed constrained by past ways of looking at things, whether it was at school or home or church,” he wrote for his 50th reunion yearbook.

Parrott died on Aug.17, 2019. He was 92 and is survived by his wife of 31 years, the former Christine Petzar; a son; a daughter; a stepdaughter; nine grandchildren; and seven great-grand­children. He was predeceased in 1983 by his first wife, the former Anne Elder.

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