Elaine and Pam Edwards discuss the Parsons family

Matthew McCarthy interviews Elaine (Parsons’s daughter) and Pam Edwards (Parsons’s grand-daughter) about the prominent career and contributions to our aviation history by Bill Parsons.

Recorded at Gordon G. Pike Railway Museum on February 11, 2023
Interviewer: Matthew McCarthy
Videographer: Christina Hearn
Duration: 1 minute, 52 seconds

Elaine Edwards: I really believed as he got older [yeah], that there weren’t very many people, to have all this stuff, all his knowledge, of what had happened to him through aviation. He did the Harbour Grace one, he did the history of the Fire Brigade and, he wanted it. In fact, he died when he was 84 and I really think looking back, that he had a whole lot written but he wanted it recorded, before he died. I mean it was always something he did, all the history of that, very interesting.

EE: As I said…looking back, I think he wanted it recorded, because he was there. And most people from conversations, can’t write the history down, but he was there and had conversations, with all these aviators. So it was, when I think about it, it blows my mind that in that early 1900 era, that you go in, and all these people. They must have been in awe of these planes, that were almost paper [laughs].

EE: [Yeah] And then he would keep, he would keep touch then at the scene, and he would send these telegraphs and then he would wait to hear….if they got there. I mean these, aviators they must have been daredevils or whatever, well to fly across the Atlantic, [for sure]…in these planes, [yeah].