2 When the family returned to Brisbane, he continued his elementary schooling at the Toowong State School. Parr started school at Cunnamulla in the far west of Queensland, where his father had gone to work as an ambulance service superintendent. His father enlisted as an infantryman in World War I and served at and survived Gallipoli, though severely injured. His maternal grandfather was a Methodist lay preacher who held a high position in the Brisbane General Post Office and could trace his lineage back to Sir Thomas More of Canterbury, who tangled fatefully with Henry VIII. His father was a Sunday school superintendent and his mother a pianist at their local church.
Robert Parr was born May 9, 1920, the only son of Charles Henry and Marie Louise Parr (née Moore), Methodist parents in the suburb of Wooloowin, North Brisbane, Queensland. Family Background and Education (1920–1939) He is best known for his 14 years as editor of the Australasian Record, the 16-page church weekly, and the Signs of the Times, the church’s outreach journal, to both of which he brought a fresh vibrant tone, making them highly effective mediums of communication during the late 1960s and 1970s. Parr served the Seventh-day Adventist (SDA) Church in the South Pacific for 37 years in full-time employment as educator, pastor, and church administrator, and in retirement as part-time writer and prison chaplain. Highly esteemed author and editor Robert (Bob) H.