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Warren marker honors Ronald Parise, ‘one of Warren’s most acclaimed and brilliant sons’
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Ronald A. Parise
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From left, Rita Parise and Catheryn Parise both of Warren, sister and mother of astronaut Ronald Parise, a Warren native, stand near the new Ronald Parise marker near the First Flight Lunar Module on Parkman Road in Warren Wednesday May 24, 2017.
Ronald Parise: Astronaut
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By Ed Runyan
WARREN
On Wednesday, Fred Pisanelli called astronaut Ronald Parise, who flew missions on the space shuttle in 1990 and 1995, “one of Warren’s most acclaimed and brilliant sons.”
But long before that, Pisanelli knew Parise as “little Ronny, my friend, the kid from the West Side, that made us all so proud to be from Warren, Ohio.”
Pisanelli went to elementary, junior high and Warren Western Reserve High School with Parise, who died in 2008 of brain cancer.
Pisanelli was one of several speakers who provided insight into the life of Ron Parise on what would have been Parise’s 66th birthday.
The occasion was the unveiling of an Ohio historical marker about Parise near the entrance to the Apollo 11 Neil Armstrong First Flight Memorial on Parkman Road.
Pisanelli said the location for the marker is appropriate because Parise grew up a short distance away from the marker on Lexington Avenue Northwest.
They met in fourth grade and ran around together, playing in the woods near the present-day West Side Warren fire station.
“That small tangle of brush and woods and fields back there was kind of our our jungle, that was the place where we ... played on our bikes or hiking through, as children will do, exploring new places, going to deep and dark places where mothers told us not to go.
“For 10-year-old kids, it was a lot of fun. And for Ronnie, I think that was just a precursor of some of the faraway places that he would actually wind up going,” Pisanelli said.
He enjoyed going to Parise’s house because “there were so many neat things to do,” such as an array of ham-radio equipment that his father, Henry, had built in the basement.
Pisanelli said he sat and watched as Parise “spooled through those radio dials and we talked to such cool places such as Australia and Iceland while we were in the sixth grade. What a cool experience.”
Later, they used the Wonder of Wonders chemistry set, pretending to invent new formulas.
“One day, a beaker full of whatever, sitting on a Bunsen burner exploded. The contents caught on fire and spread all over the work bench and partly on the floor.
“Of course, I froze. But Ronnie calmly walked over to the extinguisher, activated it and doused the fire,” Pisanelli said. “So even as a young boy, he had this presence of mind. He never got rattled. He was very steady.”
Parise got his pilot’s license before they graduated from high school in 1969.
“He got straight A’s, but he was a well-rounded individual,” Pisanelli said. “He was in the marching band and in dance band at Western Reserve [High School], and he loved to play music, and he loved his clarinet,” he said.
James Valesky of the Warren Heritage Center explained that the quest to have a marker installed to honor Parise, Warren’s “hometown hero,” began several years ago and was aided by the agreement of Pete Perich and his daughter to allow Parise to be honored at the site that honors the location where Neil Armstrong, first man on the moon, took his first flight at age 6 while living in Champion Township.
Parise, who earned his bachelor’s degree at Youngstown State University, was a payload specialist on the two space shuttle missions, logging more than 614 hours in space.
Warren Young, Parise’s physics and astronomy professor at YSU, talked about Parise’s work with the ultraviolet imaging telescope, which was the reason Parise was chosen for both shuttle missions. Parise was the lead of four astronomers who designed, developed and controlled telescopes in the bay of the space shuttle.