Olympic College head baseball coach Ryan Parker had a great relationship with his father, Wayne Parker, whom Ryan said had a “love for (baseball) greater than any I’ve seen.”

Wayne, a Bremerton native born in 1944, graduated from Bremerton High in 1963, where he played both baseball and football. He retired from the Puget Sound Naval Shipyard in 1997 and longed for a chance to get around baseball again.

“When I got hired at OC, he said, ‘Let me help out with the pitchers. I’ll do it for free.’,” Ryan Parker said speaking about his father. “He loved working with these guys. He loved sharing whatever he had with them.”

According to Ryan, Wayne began feeling dizzy the afternoon of Aug. 31 in the OC coaching office. He laid down in the conference room but seemed not to be feeling any better and was complaining, “My head feels like it’s going to explode,” Ryan said.

Although Ryan said Wayne never lost consciousness, doctors at Harrison Medical Center Bremerton decided to send him to Harborview in Seattle. Ryan said Wayne lost consciousness during the flight and never regained it.

After learning his condition would not improve, the family decided to take Wayne off life support.

Ryan said everyone was shocked as Wayne’s blood pressure had been good and his cholesterol while high, was not dangerously so.

“He had beaten prostate cancer two years ago,” Ryan said. “He was clean two years after.”

A celebration of Wayne’s life is scheduled to take place at 12 p.m. Sept. 20 at the Bremer Student Center on the OC Bremerton campus.

“I would like to invite anyone who knew him to come and share their stories and words with us,” Ryan said. “He was a great man, as a person and as a dad. He helped mold me in more ways than one.”