Jerry R. Paregien: A Life of Integrity, 1942-2021

De: Stan Paregien

Narrado por: Virtual Voice

Jerry Russell Paregien had a good life, in fact, a really good life. He and I, as cousins in Ventura County, Calif., grew up among immigrants from Oklahoma. That would include his father, Marvin and his wife Wanda, and my father Harold and my mother Evelyn, who all grew up as children of dirt poor sharecroppers who lived lives of desperation due to the worn-out, poor soil. By 1942, they and most of their kin had moved to California for steady checks and electricity. They were still poor, by their neighbors’ standards, but were honest and happy folks.

That was the situation when Jerry was born in 1942 in Santa Paula, Calif. His mom and dad divorced a few years later and he bounced around. But he excelled in his studies, and he and I became more like brothers than cousins. He graduated from high school in 1962. He joined the U.S. Army served most of his time in Germany.

In 1965, he was admitted as an officer in the California Highway Patrol. For the next 28 years, he served with integrity and distinction. He started off in Ventura County, then went to work in Los Angeles just in time for the rioting in Watts. His next station was in Santa Barbara, where soon college students protested the Vietnam War by burning the Bank of America to the ground. His next duty was in San Diego, then for a time he taught gun marksmanship and safety at the CHP Academy in Sacramento. He and his wife, Muriel (Knowles), next lived in Yuba City. They spent a lot of time there hunting and fishing.

He retired in 1992 and soon they had packed up and moved to the mountains of Tennessee. They bought a house on a mountainside near Kingsport. And from there, they looked across the valley to the far distant Clinch Mountains of Virginia.

They soon made good friends, found a solid Christian church, and he found a special place he loved – the Cherokee Rod & Gun Club. Their many adventures continued until he died in December of 2021.