LaFAYETTE, Ga. – Theresa Parker’s family clung to each other in the cemetery Saturday afternoon as several doves took wing from a wicker basket, symbolizing the peace they believe their daughter, sister and aunt now has.
Family members say her story will never be forgotten.
Parker’s 22-year-old niece, Arica Patterson, said she will never forget the call from another aunt in the spring of 2007 asking if she had talked to her “Aunt Theresa” that day.
Patterson remembered a conversation two days before when Parker spoke about finally moving out and leaving the man who abused her.
“Are you looking forward to your new life?” she remembers asking Parker.
“Yeah, I am,” Parker told her.
Parker’s family say they had a hard time believing she was finally going to leave her husband, Sam, in March 2007, after talking about it for years.
“When she told me, I couldn’t believe it,” said niece Amanda Hill, 23. “Because I really thought it would never happen.”
But when they didn’t hear from Parker after she found an apartment, her family – her mother, two sisters, two brothers and their families – began to worry.
“My first reaction was, ‘What did he do to her?'” Hill said.
Patterson said they reported Theresa missing two days later and a search began. But, she said, “we knew in our hearts” that she was gone.
For 3 1/2 years, Theresa Parker’s family has prayed, watched and waited, even after Sam Parker was convicted of her murder in 2009.
Then Parker’s remains were found Sept. 20 in a Chattooga County, Ga., cornfield.
The news forced the family to confront the loss all over again, Hill said.
“Up until I got the call that they had found her, she was still so real to me,” she said. “She was just somewhere else out of my sight.”
Saturday was the final chapter in the family’s long journey to bury Theresa Parker. Crowds gathered at LaFayette First Baptist Church to grieve with her family before they laid her to rest.
A quiet procession followed a horse-drawn carriage bearing Parker’s casket from the church to the city cemetery. Community members huddled on the roadsides and law officers saluted as the former 911 dispatcher was taken to her gravesite.
“This community has never given up on finding Theresa,” Jon Wilson, Parker’s brother-in-law, said after the funeral. “In the wake of such a tragic ordeal, which no family should ever have to endure, we could never express our gratitude. She’ll be remembered.”
FAMILY MEMORIES
Patterson said Theresa and Sam were heroes to their nieces and nephews – she was a 911 dispatcher for Walker County and he was a LaFayette police officer.
“We always thought it was so cool how they worked together,” she said.
When they got out of school, Patterson and her sister, Hill, would often go play at the 911 center while their aunt worked.
“She was like a second mom to us,” she said. “She always joked that we were like library books – she could check us out, then return us back to our parents when she wanted to.”
Hill remembered her aunt being there to help celebrate every major event.
“She was the glue to the family,” she said. “She kind of pulled everybody together and make sure everybody was there and had a big family gathering.”
At work, Parker was the supervisor who made sure the job was done correctly, said Tracy Paris, who worked with her for 15 years.
“She was precious,” Paris said. “But when it came to her job, she got the job done.”
Parker always watched out for the officers she sent out on a call, said Walker County Sheriff’s Detective Walter Hensley, who led the investigation in her case.
“She sent me on calls, she got me assistance when I needed it,” he said. “(Only when I told her) I told her I didn’t need assistance would she back off.”
Then family members saw her change. She would cry after talking to Sam on the phone, Patterson said. Her family begged her to leave, and she finally decided to do so.
“She knew she was making the right decision; it was just a matter of getting away from him,” Hill said. “She was so close.”
And then she was gone.
For 3 1/2 years, police say they drained ponds, looked in wells and combed farm land and fields looking for her body.
The family held prayer vigils, had fundraisers and continued to ask the community to help search for her body, Hill said. But no one wanted to have a memorial service even after it was clear she was gone.
“It didn’t seem right to have a closing-type thing because we weren’t finished searching for her,” she said. “But now we can.”
Now her family can began to find healing, Hill said.
“I feel like maybe this is the first step in closing this chapter and maybe moving on to the next,” she said.
“I feel like I can forgive [Sam]. I’m still sad and hurt by what he did to her, but I feel like I have to forgive him for myself. I can’t carry that hate in my heart.”