By Mary Karcher

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In early 1943, Private First Class Duane H. Parks returned to his hometown of Dorset, Vt., before he shipped out to the South Pacific to fight in World War II. The last thing on Parks’ mind was becoming a model for a painting.

So when a stranger approached him at a local square dance and offered him the chance to be in a paint­ing, Parks wasn’t interested. As a 19-year-old newly minted Marine who would soon join fellow leathernecks in battle, he had other things on his mind—not the least of which was making some good memories at the square dance in nearby Arlington.

Yet posing in his Marine uniform is just what PFC Parks ended up do­ing for none other than treasured American artist Norman Rockwell, but it was not without some persua­sion from Parks’ mother and sister.

PFC Duane Parks posed for Norman Rockwell’s “Homecoming Marine” painting, which struck a chord in wartime America when it appeared on the cover of The Saturday Evening Post in 1945. The boys in the painting are Rockwell’s sons, Peter and Jerry. An anonymous buyer purchased the original painting in May 2006 for $9.2 million, a record price for a Rockwell painting at the time.

Parks had just completed boot camp at Marine Corps Recruit De­pot Parris Island, S.C., and served a short stint at Marine Corps Base Camp Lejeune, N.C., to train on a 20-millimeter antiaircraft gun. Home on leave, he looked sharp when he went to the dance in his uniform. He was the picture of youthful exuberance with his red hair, freckled face and quick smile—just the kind of all-American teenager Rockwell loved to portray. Who better to illustrate young Americans fighting in far-off lands?

So the mild-mannered Rockwell, who was taking tickets at the dance, approached the Marine and asked if he wanted to be in a painting. The now 85-year-old Parks said his answer was, “Hell, no!” But the next morning, with family pressure, he gave in. As he tells the story, his sister Lorraine was on one side of the bed and his mother, Blanche, was on the other side and “they woke me up and yak, yak, yak, yak, yak, yak. And I said, ‘OK, shut up, I’ll do it!’ ” And today he is glad he did.

Norman Rockwell’s painting, referred to as “Homecoming Marine,” or “The War Hero,” appeared on the Oct. 13, 1945, cover of The Saturday Evening Post magazine. Rockwell hand-selected Parks to be the Marine who represented the local boy who went to battle and brought the war home to his small town on a very personal level.

In his book “Rockwell on Rockwell: How I Make a Picture,” Rockwell wrote, “Most of the pictures I did during the war took their subjects from the civilian wartime scene. That’s what I painted best. I didn’t attempt to do battle scenes. I painted scenes and people I knew something about, the everyday life of my neighbors.”

In the painting, the young Marine sits on a crate in a cluttered garage. He is surrounded by hometown friends who have gathered around to hear his stories. His frame hat is pushed back at a jaunty angle, revealing a shock of short red hair below the brim. His medals include a Silver Star and a Purple Heart—medals normally not earned by a PFC unless he has been to war. The Japanese rising sun flag is draped in his hands, a symbol of the harsh fighting Ma­rines had experienced in the war. His face is youthful, yet his furrowed brow suggests far more disquieting thoughts than his age might warrant.

Tucked in the background of the image is the blue star flag representing a family member serving in the military, accompanied by various newspaper clippings detailing the heroic feats of “Joe,” a local “garageman,” whose greasy coveralls still hang respectfully next to the articles.

 

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