'We get our community back': Victor playground project closer to fruition

Oct. 25—Norm Parkin is more than halfway to his goal of raising $75,000 to install a playground that bears his family's name.

The San Joaquin County Board of Supervisors unanimously approved allocating $10,000 to the Parkin Memorial Park Playground Project during its Tuesday meeting.

The $10,000 will be taken from Supervisorial District 4 funds.

"Part of getting out of COVID isn't just a physical recovery, it's a mental recovery," District 4 Supervisor Steve Ding said. "And it's getting people back out on the streets, children back laughing and playing."

Parkin Memorial Park, located next to Victor Elementary School on Bruella Road, was built between 1977 and 1982 in honor of Wally and Joanne Parkin, and their children Lisa and Bobby, who were murdered along with five family friends in November of 1973.

Norm Parkin, Wally's brother, began fundraising for a playground earlier this year to commemorate 50 years since the murders.

For more than 40 years, children at Parkin Memorial Park were able to use the Victor School playground.

But just a few years ago, the Lodi Unified School District gated the playground off, rendering it inaccessible to children at the park.

Norm Parkin said about $39,000 has been raised so far, of which $13,573 was raised through a GoFundMe page at tinyurl.com/ParkinPark. With Tuesday's approval, the project now has $49,000 in funding.

Rick's New York Style Pizza, 1320 Lakewood Mall, in Lodi, hosted a fundraiser Tuesday night as well, in which 25% of a customer's purchase was given to the project.

"This is a great community," he told supervisors. "And the support (for the playground) has been unreal."

Design and installation of the playground is to be approved by Lodi Unified which will maintain the park.

Norm Parkin and volunteers will handle the replacement and repairs of the tables, bleachers, barbecues and garbage cans.

In his support of the Parkin project, Ding referenced a quote that was incorporated into the Bobby Sands Mural that covers the wall of a building in Dublin, Ireland, that reads "Our Revenge Shall be the Laughter of Our Children."

"There's no better way coming out of everything we've been through than to hear our children laughing again," Ding said. "We get our community back."

The Parkin family was murdered in the early morning hours of Nov. 7, 1973 along with neighbors Richard, Wanda, Debbie and Ricky Earl. Marc Lang, Debbie's boyfriend, was also killed.

Their killers, Lodi native William Steelman, 28, and Doug Gretzler of New York, 22, had committed a string of robberies, kidnappings and murders in California and Arizona in a crime spree carried out starting in October 1973. They ultimately took the lives of 17 people.

On the night of Nov. 6, the pair came to the Lodi area with the intention of robbing the United Market.

They ended up at the Parkin house located on the corner of Orchard and Dustin roads in Victor to find teenagers Debbie and Ricky Earl babysitting 9-year-old Bobby and 11-year-old Lisa Parkin. The men took all four children hostage.

Debbie Earl called her father in fear, and Richard Earl came over minutes later. He was soon joined by his wife, Wanda Earl, and Debbie Earl's boyfriend, Mark Lang. When Wally and Joanne Parkin returned home, they too were taken hostage.

Steelman forced Wally Parkin to take him to United Market for money. The youngest children, Bobby and Lisa Parkin, were put to bed in their parents' room. The adults were tied up and thrown in a large closet. Within hours, Gretzler would use 26 bullets to kill all nine hostages.

Gretzler and Steelman took what little money they had and headed to Sacramento at 1:20 a.m. on Nov. 7. They were arrested two days later.

The pair was then extradited to Arizona to stand trial for several murders they committed there, and both were sentenced to death.

Steelman died from health complications while in prison on 1986, and Gretzler was executed in 1998.

"This is exactly why we've done discretionary funds for each district," Supervisor Tom Patti said Tuesday. "I'm happy we're bringing this forward. It's something that's a benefit to the community."