By Henry Pierson Curtis
Orlando Sentinel
ORANGE COUNTY, Fla. — Mark Parker died on Thursday, 25 years after throwing his body in harm’s way to protect Orange County residents.
Then 19, Parker was gunned down in the old courthouse in Orlando on Jan. 10, 1984, in a massacre that changed court security forever. His wound crippled the young corrections officer but never broke his spirit.
“Mark is the last victim of Thomas Provenzano,” said State Attorney Lawson Lamar, who was sheriff at the time. “He was a tough, tough kid. He didn’t spend time being miserable.”
Paralyzed from the chest down, Parker attended the annual memorial service to honor the men slain by Provenzano: court bailiff William “Arnie” Wilkerson, who died the day of the shootings, and court bailiff Harry Dalton, who succumbed to his injuries in 1991.
Nine years later, Parker attended Provenzano’s execution at Florida State Prison. “Justice has finally been served,” Parker said afterward.
Parker, 44, died about 2 a.m. at Orlando Regional Medical Center, where he was admitted Wednesday.
Condolences came from as far away as Afghanistan.
“It was a long hard battle for Mark and he made a go of it,” former Sheriff Kevin Beary said by telephone from Kabul, where he is teaching tactics to Afghan forces. “He never stopped trying to make it better for people who had suffered catastrophic injuries like he did.”
On the day of the massacre, Provenzano went to court to shoot police officers who gave him a traffic ticket. In an era before searches for weapons, he walked into the building with three guns.
Inside a courtroom, he wounded Dalton. Then he killed Wilkerson. He fired again but missed hitting a judge. Stepping into a corridor, Provenzano traded shots with another court deputy.
Hit in the crossfire, Parker required around-the-clock care for the rest of his life. After the shooting, hundreds of tradesmen, cops and others raised money and built an addition for him at his family home in Winter Garden.
“It really was a project of love,” said former Sheriff Walt Gallagher, who organized the effort as a supervisor with the Sheriff’s Office. “He was not left without support.”
A hard-core rock ‘n’ roll fan, Parker loved Led Zeppelin and thrilled at having met lead singer Robert Plant during an Orlando performance. He never missed a Daytona 500 NASCAR race.
After relearning skills as small as feeding himself with a spoon, Parker mastered computers for regular gaming sessions with soldiers in Iraq and Internet buddies around the world.
“My brother’s better on the computer with his mouth stick than I could be with my two hands,” said his sister, Colleen Parker of Winter Garden.
Survivors also include his brother, Marvin Parker of Winter Garden. His mother, Beverly Parker, died in 2004, followed a year later by his father, former Chief Deputy Charlie B. Parker.
Mark Parker always hoped to follow in his father’s footsteps. Before he retired, Beary made him an honorary deputy.
Windermere police Officer Carl Head, Parker’s best friend since their days at West Orange High School, choked up as he talked about being running buddies with a guy in a wheelchair.
Parker loved racing, “but he was into science fiction, history and the military, too,” Head said. “If you really knew Mark, then you really knew his love for his country, law enforcement and his friends.”
Funeral Information
Funeral services for Corrections Officer Parker will be conducted with full law-enforcement honors on Tuesday, March 24 at 10 a.m. at First United Methodist Church in Winter Garden, Fla.
Copyright 2009 Orlando Sentinel