Tom Parker, for years the most public face of the Hutton Parker Foundation, died last week after a four-year struggle with brain cancer. He was 77.
Parker, a butcher’s son who famously grew up on Santa Barbara’s Eastside and attended Franklin Elementary School, created a sprawling philanthropic empire by buying up hard-to-lease commercial properties and populating them with as many as 57 nonprofit agencies. By charging these agencies considerably lower-than-market rents, Parker afforded them a degree of financial security all but unheard of in Santa Barbara’s unforgiving real estate market. He estimated the savings — accrued cumulatively — totaled $2 million a year, an amount that could be plowed into operations rather than overhead.
Among the foundation’s many beneficiaries has been the Santa Barbara International Film Festival. “Tom Parker is having a love affair with this city. And we’re the recipients of that love,” gushed Film Festival Director Roger Durling at an event last year honoring Parker. “It would be a much better world if there were more people like him.”