Mourning family donates food truck to Houston nonprofit
When Jesse Parks died on New Year’s Eve 2016, at the age of 35, he left behind a devastated family, and along with it a food truck that lay dormant until now. His mother and uncles decided to honor Jesse’s memory by donating it to a nonprofit — one right here in Houston, Lucille’s 1913.
On the morning of April 22, Jeff and John Parks rolled the truck into the parking lot of the Power Center in southwest Houston, where one of the nonprofit’s kitchens is located. They were greeted warmly by Chris Williams, Lucille’s 1913 founder and owner of Lucille’s restaurant in the Museum District.
The Parks brothers had driven three days, making only two overnight stops, from southern Ohio, near Hillsboro. Their sister and Jesse’s mom, Laura Parks, had flown in from Summit County, Colo.
“I can’t tell you how much I appreciate you,” Williams told the family members as they showed him around the inside of the vehicle.
On the outside, it’s wrapped bright blue with big yellow words advertising what it once sold — crepes, smoothies, coffee — and the large face of a dodo bird smiling next to the passenger door. The business was called Dodo Island, but to the Parks family, it’s just “Jesse’s truck.”
Jesse grew up in St. Louis and later moved to Los Angeles, where he operated the food truck his family had set up to help him find his way.
Jesse “walked uphill his entire life,” wrote Jeff in a tribute to his nephew. He had severe learning disabilities and mental health issues, including bipolar disorder. His struggles led to drug addiction.
“But, you know, that’s not what I remember about Jesse,” John said. “Jesse was
a really kind, loving spirit on this planet; he would do anything for anybody.”
Laura describes her son as a very socially outgoing, engaging and good-looking young man with a great sense of humor. People often didn’t realize what was going on inside him until they got to know him better. She remembers cooking with him when he was little; he loved cooking and loved food, which is how the idea of the food-truck business came about.
Laura said Jesse had some really good days with Dodo Island. But eventually, amid mental health episodes, it became tough for him to keep up. He moved, with the truck, from Los Angeles to Ohio to be closer to family.
For some time, they thought Jesse was doing much better. He went to rehab. He was excited about the future. But on the last day of 2016, he got hold of drugs that were laced with fentanyl and died from an overdose — like thousands of other victims of the opioid epidemic that has plagued places such as southern Ohio.
Among other family members, he is survived by a daughter, who is now 11 years old. Her name is Laura, after her grandmother. They call her Little Laura.
“You lose a child, there’s no way to describe it,” said Laura, Jesse’s mom. “Losing him is losing a part of yourself.”
As the family members grieved, the food truck sat in Ohio, unused. They thought about selling it, but one day Jeff watched a TV segment on “NBC Nightly News” with Lester Holt about a nonprofit in Houston, Lucille’s 1913, that was feeding the community during the coronavirus pandemic.
He called his sister immediately: Should they donate Jesse’s truck to this organization? Laura, who had coincidentally been thinking about giving it to charity for a while, agreed.
Laura likes the Lucille’s 1913 mission of helping people from underserved neighborhoods who are hit much harder by crises than the average person, she said. Especially in a place like Houston, which is often at the center of disasters.
The journey down from Ohio wasn’t all smooth: John said the shift lever came off in his hand at one point. The truck needs some fixes, but it has a strong, brand-new engine and a 12,000-watt generator that can power an entire house, a very useful feature in outageprone Houston.
Williams already knows what he’s going to do with Jesse’s truck. First, he’s going to post Jeff ’s tribute story on the front of the vehicle, so people know where it came from. He also plans to name menu items after him.
The Lucille’s 1913 team, now led by director of development Robertine Jefferson, has been looking for new revenue streams to continue supporting its core mission: serving free meals to Houston apartment complexes in Acres Homes, Third Ward, Fifth Ward and Sunnyside.
It also hopes to incorporate the donated vehicle into a new program they are working on with the Harris County Juvenile Probation Department to combat youth recidivism. Culinary director Lawrence Walker created a curriculum that will train young adults to grow food in a community garden, then serve food, with the help of Jesse’s truck.
On Thursday night, the Parks family and the 1913 crew went out to dinner at Lucille’s to celebrate and talk about the food truck’s new life.
The family believes this is the perfect way to honor Jesse. “I think he’d be proud to see it helping people who need more help than you do,” said Laura.