“Three of the books wound up setting world records for their particular titles, which still stand.”
Rusted lawnmowers. Antique toy cars. Inch-thick gramophone records. Donald Burrell, P’82, kept a trove of objects in his Gainesville, Georgia, home, according to his granddaughter, Beth Parks, C’10. “He literally saved everything.” When Burrell died in 2016, this assortment was inherited by his only child—Beth’s mother, Jean Burrell Parks, C’82, P’10. Then, Jean passed away in 2021, and Beth and her father, Lee Parks, C’81, P’10, became the owners. As they began to sift through piles, Beth and Lee knew they needed to give special attention to one particular set of items: Burrell’s vintage comic books.
Describing himself as a “bit of a comic-book geek,” Lee says he suspected his father-in-law’s stacks of superhero adventures included a gem or two. Burrell bought the comics as a child in the late 1930s and early 1940s, and he preserved them scrupulously. “He had always taken very good care of [the comic books] and inventoried them,” Lee says. After researching auction houses specializing in art and collectibles, Lee decided to reach out to Heritage Auctions in Dallas, Texas. He shared Burrell’s inventories—and the auction house sent a representative on a 800-mile trek to view the collection in person. Within a few months, several books sold at auction for unprecedented sums. “The bidding just went crazy,” Lee says. “Three of the books wound up setting world records for their particular titles, which still stand.”
Burrell’s most valuable comic, the very first issue of Batman, wasn’t part of this auction—because Lee and Beth hadn’t unearthed it yet. “We’d always heard from Jean’s dad that he had a Batman #1, but there was no Batman #1 in the boxes I unpacked,” Lee says. It was while trying to find the keys to another of Burrell’s treasures—a 1958 Triumph built from spare parts—that Lee stumbled on the comic in a briefcase. “I immediately texted Beth and said, ‘Guess what I just found at your grandfather’s house?’ She said, ‘Batman #1.’” This time, Heritage Auctions sent an armored car to Gainesville.
Lee used a portion of the Batman #1 sale to relocate from Gainesville to Green Valley, Arizona. He and Beth also set aside significant funds for nonprofit organizations and educational institutions that have meaning for their family, including Sewanee. Recently, they established the Jean Burrell Parks, C’82, Memorial Scholarship, endowed support that will be awarded with preference for students interested in economics. “That was Jean’s major,” Lee says. Both Lee and Beth credit scholarships with enabling their matriculation at Sewanee, and they say they’re glad to pay it forward.
The Parkses’ endowed scholarship gift qualified Beth to join the Sewanee Women’s Alliance (SWA), a group of women leaders dedicated to raising scholarship funds and strengthening the University’s culture of mentorship for all students. Beth says she was excited for the opportunity. “I’ve always had a very strong group of women in my life. We’re very supportive of each other, and they’ve been great resources. I think that’s part of what appealed to me [about the SWA].”
Associate Vice President for Advancement Terri Griggs Williams, C’81, describes scholarship support as critical to the University’s success. “Sewanee is continuously in competition for the world’s brightest students, and the availability of scholarship funding weighs heavily in many high schoolers’ admissions decisions,” she says. “Endowed scholarships, like the one Beth and Lee generously provided, give Sewanee an important edge while strengthening our financial base.”
Lee, who holds a J.D. from the University of Georgia and practiced criminal law for 39 years, is also a longtime supporter of Sewanee’s women’s swimming and diving program. A focused student-athlete, Jean was the first woman in Sewanee’s history to earn a varsity letter in swimming—an accomplishment she pulled off while on the men’s swimming and diving team. As Lee explains, Sewanee didn’t offer a women’s swim program when he and Jean were undergraduates. Though the men’s team’s coach initially suggested Jean try synchronized swimming, Jean was eager to compete. “He had a reputation for being a very stubborn man, but Jean out-stubborned him,” Lee says. Eventually, Jean became captain of the team, and she was in the group of swimmers who broke a Sewanee record for the men’s 4x100 meter medley relay.
For his part, Lee was recruited to hold a stopwatch and manually time swimmers during Sewanee’s competitions. “In those days, we were in the old version of the [University] gym, and the pool was in the basement,” he says. “There were no clocks or anything.” To avoid a conflict of interest, Lee didn’t time Jean, whom he started dating almost immediately after arriving on campus. The two met in the Tiger Bay Pub during Lee’s first evening at Sewanee—he had transferred from North Georgia College, and his hallmates took him out to get acquainted. “We were sitting there talking, and these three young ladies came over,” Lee says. “One of them was this cute redhead. By the end of the evening, we were together.” They wed soon after Jean’s graduation in 1982 and were married for nearly 40 years until Jean’s passing.
Having heard about Sewanee for most of her life—and visited once, for Lee’s 15th reunion in 1996—Beth resolved as a teenager not to attend the University. During her junior year of high school, she embarked on a long road trip with her parents to tour the University of Evansville in Evansville, Indiana. Along the way, they stopped for lunch at Shenanigans. Though she realized her parents’ ulterior motives, Beth says she found herself quickly warming up to the Domain. A couple of months later, she decided to return to campus for a prospective students’ event, and she was fully sold. “I just knew. I was like, ‘This is home. This is where I belong.’”
Beth majored in psychology and earned graduate degrees in social work and public administration from Appalachian State University and the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, respectively. She now serves as grants and donor relations manager at Nourish Up, a nonprofit dedicated to ending food insecurity, and she maintains her license as a clinical social worker. As a Sewanee student, she says, she was uncertain how she’d use her psychology degree, and she turned to former Professor of Psychology Timothy Keith-Lucas, P’13, familiarly known as “TKL,” for advice. “I remember he looked at me and said, ‘I think you would make an excellent social worker,’” she says. “And I thought, ‘If TKL thinks that’s a good career path for me, it probably is.’”
Both Beth and Lee say their Sewanee friendships remain central in their lives. At the University, Lee joined Lambda Chi Alpha, and he still reunites with his fraternity brothers regularly. Beth is a Kappa Delta, and Jean was one of the charter members of Alpha Delta Theta. “I would say most of my best friends are people I met at Sewanee,” Beth says.
Lee and Beth were on campus in 2023 when Jean was posthumously inducted into the Sewanee Athletics Hall of Fame. Beth describes her mother as tenacious but humble—”a quiet force.” Speaking on Jean’s behalf at the induction ceremony, Lee opened, as he recalls, by saying, ‘If Jean were standing here, she’d be going, ‘I don’t understand what all the fuss is about. I just wanted to swim.’” Beth says her parents’ legacy at Sewanee has undeniably influenced her lasting affection for the University. “I’ve had so many good things come from Sewanee. I literally wouldn’t exist without it.”
