Henry “Hanque” Parker passed away in Hanover, NH, on July 7, 2023, at the age of 99. Hanque had a long and productive association with the AMC and the OHA, starting as the 18-year old Hutmaster at Galehead in 1942, and including service on the AMC Huts Committee for several years. He was an honorary member of the OHA and the recipient of our own Joe Dodge Award in 2000. Henry Whipple Parker was born May 31, 1924, in Goffstown, New Hampshire. After serving in the Marines and graduating Dartmouth College in 1945, Hanque returned to the Whites to work Pinkham winter crew and as an assistant to huts manager Joe Dodge and a member of the Construction Crew in 1946, where he recalled duties as diverse as shingling Galehead Hut, guiding an enthusiastic girls camp, and moving a much-less-psyched train of donkeys (AKA The White Mountain Jackass Company) around to different pack trails. At the 2018 OHA Reunion, Hanque fondly recalled the rigors of packing the then five-mile long Galehead pack trail in hobnail boots, which had to be repaired frequently by the hut boys using their own cobbler’s lathe, and cooking meals on a cast iron wood stove (Hut Croo Through The Decades, The 1940’s, Hanque Parker).
After receiving his masters in engineering at Dartmouth in 1947, Hanque worked in the construction industry for 15 years, where he became known as a master of logistics and planning on large-scale highway and dam construction projects. The one break in his influential career was from 1950-52 when he served once again in the U.S. Armed Forces in the Korean War. In 1963, Hanque joined the faculty of Stanford University’s Construction Engineering & Management Program (now called the Sustainable Design and Construction Program) in 1963, where he taught for the next three decades. After retiring from full time teaching, Hangue was named professor emeritus of civil and environmental engineering at Stanford and he and his wife Polly spent their retirement years on their beloved family farm in Campton, New Hampshire, where Hanque made maple syrup each spring.
Hanque was predeceased by his wife of 69 years, Pauline “Polly” Parker, in 2021. He is survived by children Martha Parker of Palo Alto, California; David Parker of Aspen, Colorado; Jeffrey Parker of Concord, Massachusetts; Judith Parker of San Jose, California; five grandchildren, Ross, Whit, Annie, Ellie, and Will; and two great-grandchildren.