Shirley Parsons

On July 9, 2025, Shirley B. Parsons passed away in her home in West Hills, California, at the age of 93. She was 20 days short of her 94th birthday,

She was born Shirley Ann Brown on July 29, 1931, in the small farming town of Mildred, to Scott Robert Brown and Carrie May (Sloan) Brown. The youngest of 11 children, her mother passed away when she was 8, and she was raised by her older sister, Dr. Wilma Brown. She was preceded in death by her 10 siblings and her husband of over 54 years, David R. Parsons.

She met her future husband, David Parsons, at a dance at Olathe Naval Air Station in Kansas, where he offered to give her a ride home after the dance. Their first date didn’t go well as David got a speeding ticket going downhill too fast, and she ended up having to pay the fine to keep him out of jail.

After their wedding in Kansas, she moved to Utah to start her new life with David. She worked at Lennox and the Foreign Language League in Salt Lake City until she found out she was pregnant with her first child, Gary. After that, she became a full-time mom.

In 1968, David and Shirley moved their growing family to West Hills (Los Angeles), California, after David was transferred from a National Guard Base in Salt Lake City to one in Los Angeles. To earn extra money, she worked part-time, then later full-time in the women’s clothing department at the JC Penney store in Woodland Hills, California, until her retirement.

Family was very important to her, and she took great pride in the four successful children she raised. She was very involved in her children’s education, serving as a “Room Mother” who would occasionally bring cupcakes to school to share with all the students, and later as a PTA volunteer. She stayed up late many nights typing last-minute high school term papers for her children that were due the next day.

Even after her children were grown, she continued to enjoy hosting family dinners on birthdays and holidays and buying presents for her grandkids and great-grandchildren.

After David’s death, she was able to live independently in the family home of 57 years, thanks to the support of her four children. Unfortunately, in February 2025, she began a rapid decline both mentally and physically, and all the modern medicine we have today couldn’t help her. She had led a full and productive life, and it was her time to go.

She is survived by her four children, Gary, Brian, Susan (Roach) and Craig; three grandchildren, Joshua, Christina and Ashley; and four great-grandchildren, Adelyn, Brooklyn, Caden and Wyatt.

She will be buried next to her husband, David, in the veteran’s section of Forest Lawn Memorial Park in Hollywood Hills, California.

Online messages may be left at obituaries.forestlawn.com.