The following is taken from writings in various sources on Park’s life by Park E. Gregory
By recalculation the third of November, 1918 appears to have fallen on a Sunday. The place would be 114 Aldrich Street in the city of Hudson, Michigan and the event was a parturition, mine.
The house was new, built just three years before by my grandfather Orlando Park when he retired from farming.
Grandmother Ella Susan Pettit Park attended my birth and the doctor was Isaac Lewis Spalding. Grandma would continue to live in this home until her death in the 1950's but Grandpa had only four more years.
My parents, Ernest and Velma, were living on and working a farm in Wright Township, Hillsdale County, about three-quarters of a mile west of Squawfield Corners. When it neared time for Velma to deliver she was brought to town where she would be near the doctor and would have her parents to help her.
I am told that I was born with the cord around my neck and was very dark for lack of oxygen. The trauma no doubt accounts for my limited achievements in life. (Dad had anything but limited achievements in life!)
Anyway when all had recovered sufficiently mom and I returned to the farm where we soon got into a nasty winter in an old drafty house where the winter winds would sometimes lift the carpet from the floor. Dad soon took care of that by packing straw and other more odorous farm products around the foundations.
I had trouble with colic and other unnamed illnesses. When I couldn't be taken to see the doctor, a doctor was called to the house which was some eight miles from Hudson. Doctor Barnes was one who made the trip and remembered for his black bag filled with bottles of elixirs, potions, and pills. He would concoct his prescription on the spot by mixing the different elixirs that only he understood. He always took a certain precaution by licking the cork first from each ingredient before mixing.
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