William Sterling Parsons - Death and Legacy

Death and Legacy

Parsons remained in contact with Oppenheimer. The two men and their wives visited each other from time to time, and the Parsons family especially enjoyed visiting its former neighbors at their new home at Olden Manor, a 17th century manor with a cook and groundskeeper, surrounded by 265 acres (107 ha) of woodlands at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey. Parsons was disturbed by the rise of McCarthyism in the early 1950s, but in 1953 he wrote a letter to Oppenheimer expressing his hope that "the anti-intellectualism of recent months may have passed its peak". However, on 4 December 1953, Parsons heard of President Dwight Eisenhower's "blank wall" directive, blocking Oppenheimer from access to classified material. Parsons became visibly upset, and that night began experiencing severe chest pains. The next morning, he went to Bethesda Naval Hospital, where he died while the doctors were still examining him. He was buried at Arlington National Cemetery alongside his daughter Hannah. He was survived by his father, brother, half-brother and sister, wife Martha and daughters Peggy and Clare.

The Rear Admiral William S. Parsons Award for Scientific and Technical Progress was established by the Navy in his memory. It is awarded "to a Navy or Marine Corps officer, enlisted person, or civilian who has made an outstanding contribution in any field of science that has furthered the development and progress of the Navy or Marine Corps." The Forrest Sherman-class destroyer USS Parsons was named in his honor. Her keel was laid down by Ingalls Shipbuilding of Pascagoula, Mississippi on 17 June 1957 and was launched by his widow Martha on 17 August 1958. When it was rechristened as a guided missile destroyer (DDG-33) in 1967, Clare, now a Naval officer herself, represented her family. Parsons was decommissioned on 19 November 1982, stricken from the Navy list on 1 December 1984, and disposed of as a target on 25 April 1989. The Deak Parsons Center, headquarters of Afloat Training Group, Atlantic, in Norfolk, Virginia, was also named for him. Parsons' portrait is among a series of paintings related to Operation Crossroads. His papers are in the Naval Historical Center in Washington, DC.