June 9, 2011

It's been a couple of years Dad.   I miss you.  We miss you.  Many miss you.

Thank you for your effort, courage, humor and style.  It was a good run all things considered.

Douglas Eugene Parisian.

12-27-1922.

6-11-2011.

I love you.  Give Mom my best.

Douglas retired from the Bureau of Indian Affairs as a Criminal Investigator in 1985 in Crow Agency, Montana and spent his retirement years in Spicer, Minnesota up until April of 2010 when he moved back to Waubun, Minn., the town where he was born and raised on the White Earth Indian Reservation.

Doug was an avid golfer, cherished his association with the Kandiyohi County Historical Society and enjoyed ice fishing and hunting. He enjoyed making Native American cultural crafts and was a talented artist in making porcupine quill chokers, dreamcatchers and totems.

Doug married Betty Dorene Marquart in 1951. His wife, Betty passed away in March of 1999 after a prolonged illness. He was proceded in death by his parents Victor and Josephine Parisian, sisters, Doris Rodwell and Alyce Mae Krueger, and brother, Leonard Parisian. His younger brother Jack Parisian resides in Minnesota.

I admired my father more than any other person on this planet; not for being a Law Enforcement Officer, not for being a tough guy. I admired my father for his ambition. For 20 years he went to work every day and usually was the first guy in the office. He wanted our family to have everything we needed and most of what we wanted.

Dad accepted the inevitability of death with integrity. Most Indians have a strong and natural veneration for old age, as though it were a certificate of approval for winning the long and hard battle of life. In March of 2011 he said that dying was a natural extension of birth, that it was part and parcel, that they went together and that he looked forward to seeing his wife, Betty, in Heaven.

Dad, you were always there for me and you will be missed tremendously. I attribute much of your success in life to your ability to maintain an elevated mood and staying disciplined. You always knew where you stood and you stood there. You taught me well and I will do my best to honor your memory for the rest of my life. In death, as in life, you were a winner. God Bless Douglas Eugene Parisian.

Dean Parisian, June 9, 2011.