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Don Parrish (adventurer)

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Don Parrish
Photo of Don Parrish taken on the Lighthouse of Market Reef
Born
Donald Maltby Parrish Jr.

(1944-10-27) October 27, 1944 (age 80)
Washington, D.C
CitizenshipAmerican
Known forAdventure

Donald "Don" Maltby Parrish Jr. (born October 27, 1944) is an American adventurer and former technical manager at AT&T Bell Laboratories.

Early life and education

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Donald Maltby Parrish Jr. was born on October 27, 1944, in Washington, D.C., to Donald Maltby Parrish and Herdis Borgny Anderson.[1] After moving to Iowa a few months before his fourth birthday, the family moved to Dallas where he spent the rest of his childhood.[2]

Parrish graduated from W.W. Samuell High School in 1962.[3] He graduated from the University of Texas in June 1966 with a Bachelor of Arts degree in mathematics.[4][5] In June 1968, he graduated from the University of Chicago with a Master of Science degree in Computer Science.[4][5]

After retirement, Parrish studied Web design and Spanish for two years at the College of DuPage from 2001 to 2003.[6]

Career

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Parrish began working for Bell Labs in Holmdel Township, New Jersey in June 1966, before being transferred to Bell's new Indian Hill Laboratory in Naperville,[7] Parrish worked in the call processing group, designing programs that switched telephone calls under computer control and provided new services to subscribers.[8]

In 1972, Parrish was transferred from Bell Labs to Illinois Bell as the Switching Manager responsible for Aurora, Illinois, a position he held for two years.[9][10] In 1977, AT&T decided to sell its Electronic Switching Systems overseas. Parrish volunteered to work in the International Switching Development Organization in a newly created role as its planning manager.[11]

In 1984 and 1985 Parrish made three trips to China to secure the first 5ESS Switch project to enter the local switching market.[12][13] Parrish initiated the development of the 5ESS International Gateway Switch for Singapore.[9] In late 1990 Parrish was assigned to help break into the Japanese market.[14]

Parrish retired in 1996 at age 51 and continued working for another five years as a consultant before quitting in 2001.[15]

Travel

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Parrish has 13 passports, has flown 5 million air miles, and visited more than 60 islands by ship.[16]

In 1965, when Parrish was 20, he visited West Germany for the summer and worked as an unskilled laborer in a metal factory in Hanau near Frankfurt.[15] Parrish purchased an old motorcycle and lived in a room in the home of a German family.[17] By 1969, he was exploring the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe[15] during the height of the Cold War.[18] He made his first trip around the world in 1971.[15][19]

In 1983, Parrish completed his first major travel objective: visiting all 50 U.S. states.[20] In 2011, at age 66, he completed visits to all 193 member states of the United Nations,[20] ending with Mongolia.[21] Parrish visited the South Pole on the 100th anniversary of Roald Amundsen's Expedition of 1911.[22]

After visiting Conway Reef, located 280 miles from the main islands of Fiji, on November 2, 2013, Parrish was ranked number one by the World's Most Traveled People.[23]

In February 2017, he completed the Travelers' Century Club (TCC) list of 325 countries, becoming the 26th person in the TCC club to achieve this.[24]

He has also visited 937 of the 1013 locations on the Most Traveled People list and ranked #1 on the list as of July 2022.[25]

Parrish, who knows Hangul,[26] also visited North Korea with other travelers, visiting the war museum and monuments to Kim Il Sung.[27] Parrish was selected by his group to place flowers at the grave of Kim Il Sung's wife, Kim Jong-suk.[26]

Personal life

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Parrish is unmarried with no children[16] and lives in the suburbs of Chicago.[28]

Parrish is a co-founder of the Libertarian Party of Illinois.[29] He was the Libertarian Party candidate for the United States Senate election in Illinois, 1986.[30][5]

Media

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Parrish was profiled by the Daily Herald in 2014,[31] the BBC in 2015[21] and Die Zeit in 2016.[1] In 2017 he was interviewed by Ric Gazarian for the Counting Countries podcast.[32] Parrish has been featured in: Chicago Tribune,[16] NBC ,[33] Daily Herald,[31] Emirates Airlines magazine,[15] The Daily Telegraph[34] and CBS Radio.[35] In December 2019 he was mentioned in the Colombian magazine Avianca.[36]

Accomplishments

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  • Parrish holds a US patent for Dynamic network automatic call distribution.[37]

Awards

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  • Parrish received the ETIC Award for 2018. Presented to him in Baghdad during the "Extreme Traveler International Congress", Parrish was dubbed the "Champion of the World" among extreme travelers, for his lifetime achievements within the Extreme Traveler community.[38]
  • Parrish was awarded by the Travelers' Century Club president on March 11, 2017, for completing the TCC travel list of 325 countries. The award includes an engraved plaque on a pedestal of European crystal and a globe that rotates by Solar power.[24][39]
  • In 2015, BBC Travel named Parrish as one of six travel pioneers for 2015.[21]

References

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  1. ^ a b "Don Parrish: The World's Most Traveled Man". ZEIT ONLINE (in German). Retrieved 2024-12-29.
  2. ^ Trapp, Ryan (2015). Chasing 193: The Quest to Visit Every Country in the World. CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform. p.363.
  3. ^ "1962 yearbook from W.W. Samuell High School from Dallas, Texas". Classmates.com. Retrieved 2024-12-29.
  4. ^ a b Bell Laboratories Record, July/August 1983, Page 14
  5. ^ a b c Chicago Tribune, October 26, 1986, Campaign Section, US Senate page
  6. ^ "College of Dupage" (PDF). donparrish.com. Retrieved 12 September 2023.
  7. ^ Hirsch-Blackman, Joni (July 7, 2016). "A Lifetime of Travel". West Suburban Living.
  8. ^ Bell Laboratories Record 1965[usurped]decadecounter.com
  9. ^ a b "1996 Review".
  10. ^ Bell Labs News, March 17, 1975, Page 1
  11. ^ Trapp, Ryan (2015). Chasing 193: The Quest to Visit Every Country in the World. CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform. p. 366.
  12. ^ The 5ESS Switching System (The AT&T Technical Journal, July–August 1985, Vol. 64, No. 6, Part 2)
  13. ^ "Visit to Beijing in October 2005". www.donparrish.com.
  14. ^ Higashi, Chikara and Lauter, Peter G. The Internationalization of the Japanese Economy. p.182.
  15. ^ a b c d e Open Skies magazine, September 2016 issue. Open Skies Magazine. p. 59
  16. ^ a b c Most Traveled Person in the World
  17. ^ Trapp, Ryan (2015). Chasing 193: The Quest to Visit Every Country in the World. CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform. p. 365.
  18. ^ Flood, Danny (2015-07-28). "The quest to visit every country: meet 34 of the most traveled people in the world". www.openworldmag.com. Retrieved 2024-12-29.
  19. ^ Trapp, Ryan (2015). Chasing 193: The Quest to Visit Every Country in the World. CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform. p. 381.
  20. ^ a b Trapp, Ryan (2015). Chasing 193: The Quest to Visit Every Country in the World. CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform. p. 386.
  21. ^ a b c "Travel Pioneers: Don Parrish". BBC Travel. Retrieved 2024-12-29.
  22. ^ "World's Most Traveled Man". 2017.
  23. ^ Trapp, Ryan (2015). Chasing 193: The Quest to Visit Every Country in the World. CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform. p. 363.
  24. ^ a b "Travelers' Century Club Award".
  25. ^ "Most Traveled People". mtp.travel. Retrieved 2024-12-29.
  26. ^ a b Trapp, Ryan (2015). Chasing 193: The Quest to Visit Every Country in the World. CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform. p. 379.
  27. ^ "Bizarre trip of Lifetime to N. Korea". Los Angeles Times. November 11, 2005. Retrieved 2023-08-10 – via PressReader.
  28. ^ Horne, Bev (2014-06-06). "Moving Picture: Downers Grove man is world's 'most traveled'". www.dailyherald.com. Retrieved 2024-12-29.
  29. ^ "Clubs and Organizations".
  30. ^ Larouche Pumps Up The 'Fringe', April 21, 1986, by R. Bruce Dold
  31. ^ a b Archived at Ghostarchive and the Wayback Machine: Moving Picture: Traveler Don Parrish. YouTube.
  32. ^ "Don Parrish - 193 countries ... And is the most traveled person on MTP!". 3 January 2017.
  33. ^ Budget Travel, NBC, April 28, 2011. [1]
  34. ^ Morris, Hugh (7 August 2018). "10 curious places you must visit in your lifetime, according to the world's most travelled person". The Telegraph.
  35. ^ "All Countries on Earth". www.donparrish.com.
  36. ^ "Avianca Revista". Archived from the original on 2019-12-07. Retrieved 2019-12-07.
  37. ^ "United States Patent: 5450482 - Dynamic network automatic call distribution".
  38. ^ "ETIC 2018 Awards". 17 November 2018.
  39. ^ "About the TCC | the Travelers' Century Club®".

Further reading

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