Biography
Born at Falling Creek, Lenoir County, North Carolina, George Fountain Parrott was the 3rd of 7 children born to George Franklin and Julia Bizzell Parrott, and was first cousin to Marion A. Parrott. His maternal grandfather, Fountain Bizzell, had served in Company G, North Carolina 55th Infantry Regiment. George attended first the Kinston Graded School, then the Rhodes Military Institute, and finally graduated from the Oak Ridge Institute in North Carolina. He was able to attend the US Naval Academy after having been appointed from the 2nd North Carolina district by the Hon. Claude Kitchin.
Parrott was appointed Midshipman 3 July 1906 and graduated from the U.S. Naval Academy, class of 1911. He was promoted to the rank of Ensign March, 1912; Lt. Jr. grade March, 1914; Lt. Sr. grade April, 1917; and Lieutenant Commander August, 1918.
He was the executive officer on the USN Shaw (DD–68) in the English Channel. The "Shaw's own ordeal came on 9 October 1918. While escorting the giant British transport, Aquitania, Shaw's rudder jammed just as she was completing the right leg of a zigzag, leaving her headed directly towards the transport. A moment later, Aquitania struck Shaw, cutting off 90 feet of the destroyer's bow, mangling her bridge and setting her on fire". Lt. Parrott was killed during the accident. He is a recipient of the Navy Cross and listed on the World War I Honor Roll and on the Tablets of The Missing at the American Cemetery and Memorial section of Brookwood Cemetery in Brookwood, Surrey County, England.
Read more about this topic: George Parrott
Famous quotes containing the word biography:
“The best part of a writer’s biography is not the record of his adventures but the story of his style.”
—Vladimir Nabokov (1899–1977)
“In how few words, for instance, the Greeks would have told the story of Abelard and Heloise, making but a sentence of our classical dictionary.... We moderns, on the other hand, collect only the raw materials of biography and history, “memoirs to serve for a history,” which is but materials to serve for a mythology.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Just how difficult it is to write biography can be reckoned by anybody who sits down and considers just how many people know the real truth about his or her love affairs.”
—Rebecca West (1892–1983)