Ryan W. Parker was enjoying one of the best days of his life on Sunday, sitting beside his longtime girlfriend and watching his favorite sport, baseball, at a party atop a building overlooking Wrigley Field. Halfway through the game, the lifelong Cubs fan took a few moments to call his mother and tell her what a great time he was having.
“One of the last things he said to me was, `Mom, you really ought to be here,'” recalled his mother, Dianna. “Then he put his girlfriend, Carly, on the phone and she told me he was like a little kid, so excited. She said, `I wish you could see how happy he is.'”
Mr. Parker, 25, of Naperville, a construction worker and champion pool player, died Sunday, Aug. 1, in Illinois Masonic Medical Center in Chicago, of injuries suffered when he fell off the elevated-train platform near the Addison Street stop.
Parker described her son, who lived with her, as a fun-loving young man with a big heart.
“You hear this a lot, but he really was the life of a party,” she said. “He had this laugh that could fill a room and bring people together.”
Born in Aurora, Mr. Parker graduated from Waubonsie Valley High School, where he pitched for the baseball team. One of his first jobs was in sales, working as a greeter at Turtle Wax Car Wash in Naperville.
“He was one of their top salespeople,” his mother said. “He’d greet people as they pulled up in their cars and tell them about different washes they could get. He almost always got them to upgrade to the better wash.”
After high school, Mr. Parker began working in construction and received an associate’s degree from College of DuPage. This fall he hoped to attend Aurora University to pursue a bachelor’s degree.
“After doing hard physical labor for a few years, he decided to go back to college and get a degree in business,” his mother said. “He was so good with numbers that he hardly ever used a calculator.”
According to his mother, Mr. Parker’s mathematical mind also helped him become a skilled pool player. He finished in eighth place this year in a statewide pool tournament.
“He’d approach pool as if it were a geometry problem,” she said. “He’d line up a ball so perfectly that there was no way it would miss a hole.”
But Mr. Parker’s caring nature and desire to share with others was what made him special, family members said. Just weeks before his death, after receiving his driver’s license renewal notice, he decided to become an organ donor.
“If out of this tragedy comes a heightened awareness of things such as the importance of organ donors or the urgent need for rails on `L’-train platforms to protect people from falling, then Ryan’s death won’t be in vain,” said Patrick Murphy, his mother’s fiance.
Other survivors include his father, Welby; a sister, Danielle Abel; his maternal grandfather, Sterling Hartman; and his paternal grandparents, Welby F. Sr. and Margaret.
Visitation will be held from 4 to 8 p.m. Thursday in Dieterle Memorial Home, 1120 S. Broadway, Montgomery. Services will be held at 1 p.m. Friday in the funeral home.
