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Revised on
September 10, 2018 Ann
Lee Boyer Parks
of Easton, Pennsylvania, and Horseheads, New York LINKS
Ann Lee's Brother, Neil Boyer Ann Lee's Parents, Art and Anna Boyer The Boyers of Easton Photo Gallery of the Boyers of Easton Neil Boyer's Home Page Ann Lee Boyer, the second child of Art and Anna Boyer, was born in Easton Hospital on February 20, 1945. She attended the Freeman School in Phillipsburg and, after the family moved to Wilson Borough, the Liberty Elementary School and Wilson High School, from which she graduated in 1963. She played the trombone and sang in the mixed chorus in high school and the choir at Calvary Church. Ann Lee later took the executive secretarial course and graduated from Churchman's Business College in Easton, which her mother also attended.
On June 21, 1969 (just two months before the marriage of her brother), Ann Lee married Edward Allen (Edd) Parks, who had also graduated from Wilson High School and was then a student at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Boston. They were married by the Reverend Walter Stanley Boyer, Ann Lee's uncle (who had also married her parents), and the Reverend Robert Neely, in Calvary Methodist Church in Easton. She and Edd lived in various military installations while Edd was in the Army, including Schweinfurt and Wurzburg, Germany. While in Germany, they had their only child, Stephanie Michelle Parks. Edd Parks had been born in Amesbury, Massachusetts, on July 4, 1947, the son of Marjorie and Howard E. Parks. He was the oldest of three children. A brother, William Parks, was living in St. Augustine, Florida, in 2011. A sister, Gail Parks Herbert, born on May 29, 1954, died in St. Augustine on February 25, 2011, at the age of 56. Their father, Howard Parks, born on July 14, 1920, died on April 30, 1969, just prior to the marriage of Edd and Ann Lee. He had been a leader in local Masonic activities. Edd's mother, Marge Parks, worked as an operating room nurse at Easton Hospital until the early 1990s and in 2005 continued as a leader in area activities of the Order of the Eastern Star.
After his graduation from MIT, Edd joined the Army. The family lived in Georgia, then at an Army base in Schweinfurt, West Germany, near Wurzburg and Frankfurt; later they were at Fort Sill, Oklahoma. After six years in the Army, Edd was employed by the Corning Glass Works in Corning and Big Flats, New York, beginning in 1976. His work took him on frequent trips to Sao Paolo, Brazil, to establish new manufacturing facilities for Corning Glass. In 1984, he was named manager of manufacturing systems in Corning's science products division. About 1987, Edd was given a formal assignment as technical manager for Corning Glass in Brazil.
On November 13, 1990, Edd was stricken with a heart attack while driving to work in Sao Paolo, Brazil, and he was pronounced dead at the Casa de Saude e Maternidade Santana, a hospital in Mogi das Cruzes. Edd was 43. A memorial service was held in Olivet Presbyterian Church in Easton, and another in Horseheads. Edd's remains were cremated and buried in Maple Grove Cemetery, Horseheads, New York. Ann Lee's various jobs included being secretary to a purchasing agent and to the manager of Rock Drill Research and Development, both at Ingersoll-Rand Company in Phillipsburg, New Jersey, where her father, grandfather, brother, and many other relatives had worked. She was also secretary to the director of marketing of the Alpha Portland Cement Company, in Easton, and secretary to the Gilbane Building Company's project manager during construction of the John Hancock Tower in Boston. While in West Germany, she did volunteer work for the Red Cross and served as a teacher's aide. In l987, she was employed as a bookkeeper and computer system operator for the Westinghouse Industrial and Government Tube Division, an assembly facility for cathode ray tubes near her home in Horseheads, New York. Later, this company was operated under the name Imaging and Sensing Technology Corporation. In her final employment, Ann Lee was a payroll clerk at ISTC.
While Edd was employed by Corning Glass, the family lived at 113 Lilac Drive, Horseheads, New York, between Corning and Elmira. Later, he took an assignment for Corning Glass in Brazil and Ann Lee and their daughter Stephanie remained in Horseheads. Ann Lee and Edd were divorced in February 1990. In early 1990, Ann Lee suffered recurrent but mysterious pains in her back and elsewhere in her body. Many months passed before doctors diagnosed the problem as rapidly progressing multiple myeloma, a relatively rare disease not common in young white women. Ann Lee was hospitalized several times and provided with nursing care at home. She was seriously stricken at her home on March 21, 1991, and pronounced dead at Arnot-Ogden Memorial Hospital, in Elmira NY, barely three months after the disease was diagnosed. She was 46. Memorial services were held at the Barber Funeral Home in Horseheads. Ann Lee was buried on March 26, 1991, in a grave next to the remains of Edd in Maple Grove Cemetery in Horseheads. A tombstone bearing both their names sits in approximately the third row back from an interior road, behind markers bearing the names Arlene Olin Edger (next to the road) and Hetherton (between Edger and Parks). Stephanie Michelle Parks, the only child of Ann Lee and Edd Parks, was born on April 17, 1973, at the U.S. Army Hospital in Wurzburg, West Germany, where her father was assigned. A few months earlier, her grandfather Art Boyer wrote to his siblings that “Ann Lee and Edd have announced the expected arrival of our first grandchild (children?) in April. Since the event will take place in Germany, will the baby be German? Speak German?” Stephanie’s official birth certificate was written in German, like those of many of her Boyer ancestors, but she also had one in English from the Department of State. Stephanie was baptized in an Army chapel on a base in Schweinfurt, on September 16, 1973, in the presence of her grandparents, Art and Anna Boyer, who had flown to Germany for the event.
After the family returned to the United States, she attended the Gardner Road Elementary School in Horseheads and then Horseheads Junior High School. She graduated from Horseheads High School in June 1991. Just before her graduation, her parents died within four months of each other, her father in Brazil and her mother at home in Horseheads. Stephanie was 17.
In high school, Stephanie played clarinet and for a while played in the band. Following high school, she moved to an apartment in nearby Corning and attended Corning Community College. She received the degree of Associate in Applied Science in January 1994. In September of that year, she entered Ithaca College, in Ithaca, New York, majoring in business administration. She graduated in May 1996, and the following month she moved from Ithaca to St. Augustine, Florida, where she lived near the house of her aunt, Gail Parks Herbert. In September 1996, Stephanie began working in St. Augustine in the registration office of the Institute of Physical Therapy, a school that offers training programs in physical therapy around the country. The school was later named the University of St. Augustine for Health Sciences. In 1997, Stephanie reported that on weekends she was also helping arrange displays in an antique store. In mid-2002, Stephanie began working in real estate in the St. Augustine area. She received a real estate license and began working with Watson Realty Corporation. In early 2005, Steph moved to Palm Coast, just south of St. Augustine, and was selling houses and lots in a popular area.
See other pictures of Stephanie here. LINKS Art Boyer's Family Genealogical Chart Ann Lee's Parents, Art and Anna Boyer Ann Lee's Brother, Neil Boyer The Boyers of Easton Photo Gallery of the Boyers of Easton The Boyers of Orwigsburg The Jacksons of Cumbria, England Neil Boyer's Home Page |
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