J. R. Parrish

When J.R. Parrish was two years old, his mother left him with his paternal grandmother and he never saw her again. At seven, he sold flower seeds for spending money, and had a paper route at ten. At eleven, he began living with his father (a navy man), stepmother, and three half brothers. J.R. show more baby-sat, mowed lawns, and pumped gas to earn his way. The navy lifestyle dictated repeated cross-country moves, and J.R. attended several different high schools. At nineteen, he went to work for a dairy. Six months later, he was married; eleven months after that, he and his wife had a daughter, and five years later, a son. He became the top salesman in the USA for a Fortune 500 company at twenty-six, was in the top five nationwide for Xerox at twenty-eight, and started his own commercial real estate company in Silicon Valley at thirty-one. J.R. retired in Hawaii at age fifty-five. show less