NOTABLE ACHIEVERS IN YOUR COMMUNITY : Volunteering Chisels Out a Masterpiece

Ivan Parry brought out the green salad.

At age 80, the 6-foot-7 retired teacher still looks as rugged as the cowpoke role he played in a John Wayne movie.

Parry placed the salad on a table, next to the potato salad, the pirogi, squash, corn and homemade chicken soup.

Lunch at the Cornerstone, an outreach center for the homeless mentally ill in Van Nuys, was served.

“He has become a dad to a lot of these guys,” said Ludelia Cowan, Cornerstone program coordinator. Parry has been volunteering at the center for three years, ever since he went to a Thanksgiving dinner at the cramped but cozy house on Van Nuys Boulevard.

“When he saw all of these people needed help, right away he started to ask what he could do,” Cowan said.

Parry has since helped serve lunch most weekdays at Cornerstone, which offers food, a shower, a place to wash clothes and an address where clients can receive Social Security checks.

With a smile and sometimes a friendly pat on the shoulder, Parry spooned the green salad on one plate, potato salad and pirogi--a meat-stuffed Russian pastry--onto another.

Cowan added the squash and corn and ladled a cup of her homemade chicken soup for the clients.

“He has more patience than Job,” Cowan said of Parry. “Nothing ever surprises him.”

After fixing special plates for those who cannot make it to the center that day, plus calling out for seconds, Parry often relaxes with the clients, “throwing the bull,” as he puts it.

“I consider them to be my good friends,” said Parry, who jokes with them about the imaginary yachts and polo ponies he could never afford after 30 years as an electronics teacher.

He also tells stories about his U.S. Navy combat experience in the South Pacific or his short-lived acting career when he played a sidekick to Walter Brennan in the 1948 John Wayne movie, “Red River.”

“When he’s not here, the clients worry about him,” Cowan said, noting that they once sent a card and flowers when Parry was briefly in the hospital.

Cowan renamed a small room at the center the “Ivan Parry Reading Room,” which is now jammed with books, computers and equipment. A larger room will be set aside for the collection when the center moves next month to a larger building.

Parry has a philosophical reason for volunteering.

“I think in three years, I’ve improved myself as a human being,” Parry said. “That’s my reward.”

Parry said he thinks of people the way Michelangelo thought about marble. The Renaissance artist believed that beautiful artwork already existed within the stone, and it was simply up to him to remove the unnecessary pieces.

Parry believes that working at the center has helped him remove a lot of unnecessary pieces of himself, he said.

“We’re all here to learn something,” he said. “If we all perfected ourselves, we’d have heaven on earth.”

Forty years ago, Parry said he was a self-centered beach bum and feels he now has to keep working to improve himself.

“I’m still chipping away at that marble,” he said.

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