Dennis & Barbara's Top 25 All-Time Interviews
Society & Culture:Relationships
Gone Fishing With Hank Parker (Part 1) - Hank Parker
Gone Fishing With Hank Parker (Part 1) - Hank Parker
Gone Fishing With Hank Parker (Part 2) - Hank Parker
Gone Fishing With Hank Parker (Part 3) - Hank Parker
FamilyLife Today® Radio Transcript
References to conferences, resources, or other special promotions may be obsolete.
Hooked on Christ
Guest: Hank Parker
From the series: Gone Fishing with Hank Parker (Day 1 of 3)
Bob: Everybody in the little town where Hank Parker grew up knew that Hank’s dad, Mo, was the town drunk. But he still had friends who never gave up on him, including one friend who dropped by the house one Saturday afternoon. Here’s Mo Parker’s son, Hank.
Hank: He said, “Mo, I wanted to talk to you; but I see you’ve got Hank here with you. I‘m not going to bother your father/son time; but Mo, I want to leave you with one thought: “If you died today, where would you spend eternity?” My dad was about half drunk. I heard him say later that he had drunk the rest of the bottle of alcohol and opened another one and could not get drunk enough to get that thought off his mind.
Bob: This is FamilyLife Today for Wednesday, June 7th. Our host is the President of FamilyLife®, Dennis Rainey, and I'm Bob Lepine. We’ll hear about the dramatic turnaround in Mo Parker’s life; and we’ll meet his son, Hank, today.
1:00
Stay with us.
And welcome to FamilyLife Today. Thanks for joining us. So this is for real; right?—“the rod-and-reel answer to Michael Jordan,”—that’s what it says right here. That’s the guy we’ve got today?
Dennis: I’m just telling you, Bob—there is a big difference in fishing with a true professional fisherman and just being a good amateur.
Bob: Help our listeners understand, because some of them are not fishermen or fisherwomen. They’ve never been to a pond with a rod and a reel. They’re going, “So you want me to listen to a guest who is a pro fisherman.”
Dennis: Well, you’re going to hear a compelling story of how the God of the universe created a young man to use for His purposes. But he didn’t take the normal route to find that purpose. We are going to listen to Hank Parker’s story today. Welcome to the broadcast, Hank.
Hank: Well, it is certainly a privilege to be here.
2:00
I’m excited.
Dennis: Yes; I thought Bob was actually going to ask you just about when you had me on your fishing show.
Bob: I was going to get there, because he came back bragging about—[Laughter]
Dennis: Oh, I was not bragging.
Bob: He said, “I could do that. I could be just like Hank Palmer.” That’s what he was telling us. [Laughter]
Dennis: No; I did not say that, Hank. I came back and I said, “There is a big difference between someone who has won the national championship of bass fishing twice and the rest of us who grew up on little lakes and streams around the country.”
Bob: We should explain you have a television show, where you go—you take people fishing on your show; right?
Hank: I had Dennis Rainey as a guest. How big is that? [Laughter] He did well. Let me tell you—he’s being modest.
Dennis: He took me to a fish hatchery. [Laughter]
Hank: Yes; we were fishing in a great place, no doubt.
Dennis: Hank, I have to ask you this—you had an ambition, as a boy, at the age of 15.
3:00
Hank: Yes; I didn’t have a lot of options. I was not an academic achiever—that is an absolute understatement. I don’t know—when I was just a kid, I went fishing and just fell in love with it. It just mesmerized me. It was bigger than life itself to me. I started reading about these guys, who were making a living bass fishing; and I said: “That is me. That’s what I’m going to do.”
Dennis: I want to go back to a statement you just kind of slipped by. [Laughter] You said you were not an academic achiever. There was something taking place in you—you didn’t understand until you became an adult, later on. Explain to our listeners what happened.
Hank: Yes; I had dyslexia. The little school system I was in—we were in a little small town of Maiden, North Carolina—about 2,400 people I think. I may be off some there—but a very, very small town—just a little school. I don’t know that any schools knew anything about dyslexia in 1958 or -9.
4:00
I just read everything backwards. The harder I tried, the worse it became. I felt like I was the dumbest guy in the world.
My mom would sit down with me at times and really try to get me to buckle down and do my homework. The more I tried to really get it right, the more I got it wrong. I just felt stupid.
Bob: Did you grow up with nobody believing in you?
Hank: Pretty much I did. I had a very dysfunctional home. My dad was a drunk. My mother later—by the time I was probably in the third grade—by that time, my mom had really started taking medication for [depression]—antidepressants. She’d stay in the bed all the time. So pretty much after the time I was probably fourth/fifth grade on, I was kind of on my own.
Dennis: —like into the wee hours of the night on your own.
Hank: Yes; I would do whatever. My mom and my dad separated. My dad was a drunk / my mom finally got tired of that—she left. At that time, it was no adult supervision or guidance; or I didn’t have to report to anyone.
5:00
Bob: And no spiritual direction in your life at that point?
Hank: No; we had gone to church when I was a kid. We went to a church that was not really a Bible-basic church. I never heard the gospel until I was 16 years old.
Dennis: You actually robbed vending machines to get cash to do what?
 ...
Create your
podcast in
minutes
It is Free