Early Life
Parker was born Andreas Cornelis van Kuijk in Breda, the Netherlands, the seventh of eleven children. As a boy, he worked as a barker at carnivals in his home town, learning many of the attributes that he would require in later life working in the entertainment industry.
At the age of 15 Parker moved to Rotterdam, gaining employment on the boats in the port town. At age 17 he first displayed signs of wanting to run away to America to "make his fortune," and a year later, with enough money to sustain him for a short period, he entered America illegally by jumping ship from his employer's vessel. During his first visit there, he traveled with a Chautauqua educative tent show, before returning briefly to the Netherlands.
Alanna Nash would later write in The Colonel, her biography of him, that there were questions about a murder in Breda in which Van Kuijk, as he was then still known, might have been a suspect or a person of interest at least. This might have motivated Parker to avoid seeking a passport, as the Netherlands has an active extradition treaty with the United States, and Parker might have wanted to avoid criminal arrest by Dutch authorities in that case.
Read more about this topic: Colonel Tom Parker
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