Peggy Parks

Meg Donahue

Daughter Pushes Honor For Challis Publisher

The Challis Area Chamber of Commerce has picked Challis Messenger Publisher Peggy Parks for its Lifetime Achievement Award, with a boost from her daughter who also designs the Messenger's lively online issues.

Parks' award was announced at the chamber's annual banquet at the Y-lnn Cafe February 24. Parks was nominated by her daughter Meg Donahue. In the nomination letter, Donahue recalled that her mother and father, Allen, purchased the Challis Messenger in 1972. Parks had a Ph.D. in pharmacology and her only journalism experience was a one-year stint as editor of her dorm newspaper in college.

After a divorce in 1983, Parks became the sole owner, editor and publisher of the Messenger. "That year, the largest earthquake to hit the continental United States In 25 years rocked central Idaho." Donahue recalled, and Parks and her "talented staff' produced a supplement, "The Quake of '83," which netted national honors for the newspaper from the National Newspaper Association. Parks serves as treasurer for Idaho Press Women Assn.

Donahue wrote, in her nomination letter, that her mother has been a good role model, not only for herself and brother Warren, but for Messenger employees. "Reporters under her tutelage have gone on to do amazing things," Donahue wrote. "Molly O'Leary earned her law degree while raising an infant daughter and went on to open her own law firm and win Idaho Business Woman of the Year award in 2003. And Andy Scutro was the only weekly newspaper journal1st in the nation to be sent over to cover the aftermath of the Iraq war recently."

Longtime Challis resident Anna Means once said: "Peggy is an institution. She is the Messenger."