During a walk with her Russian wolfhound, Finnegan, Henniker resident Joan O’Connor stops to fix part of a memorial to the late Joe Parris outside the New England College administration building. Parris sat on the bench on nights with nice weather. NEC students and Henniker residents set up the memorial to Parris, who died last Tuesday.
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The Blue Seal dog food, the crunchy brand near the front of the store, had to be the proper height, five bags high.

Every day.

Joe Parris held court there for years, the dog food serving as his chair, the Henniker Farm and Country Store his courthouse, his forum, his pulpit.

Sadly, court is now adjourned. Parris died last week of congestive heart failure. He was 77.

He leaves behind his wife, Angie; his son, Joe Jr.; his daughter, Renee; and another son, Billy, born out of wedlock and raised by his grandparents. Parris and Angie had another son, Mark, who was killed while skiing two years ago.

Parris and Angie moved their three kids from Medford, Mass., to Henniker in 1969, a black family in a white town during a tumultuous time in our history. Skin color, however, made no difference to the locals.

Instead, Parris was judged by the color he brought to the town's businesses and identity.

He joked, he spread innocent gossip, he spoke of his love for deep-sea fishing, and he made children feel important, drawing them out from behind their mothers.

"He thrived on people," said Grace Dunklee Cohen, who moved to town nearly 40 years ago and works in public relations. "He was happiest when he could make kids happy. And he was humble. He didn't like people making a fuss over him."

Impossible. How can you ignore someone whose fingerprints remain everywhere?

From the tears in Becca Mock's eyes as the Kearsarge Regional High senior, daughter of the Farm and Country Store's owners, remembered the fishing trip that customers treated Parris to last summer; to the woman in the store and the man in the parking lot, both of whom heard a reporter interviewing sources and chimed in with, "You must be talking about Joe"; to the bench on which Parris often sat, the one in the heart of downtown now adorned with flowers and a big pumpkin full of signatures and messages.

"Stella and Matt and Lisa and Ally. We will miss your reliable, steady presence."

Parris was, indeed, reliable. He owned a service station in Medford, but a bad back, suffered during his military service, changed his life. He then raised livestock, cut meat, fished and turned downtown into his own private little playground.

He wore a baseball hat, glasses and a smile throughout his day. He'd start at the country store, where a cup of coffee, his dog-food throne and warm conversation waited.

"When we purchased the store, he had been coming for years," said Kevin Mock, owner for the past five years. "He just became a regular, on a daily basis, sometimes two or three times a day."