Eleanor Parker
Eleanor Parker (born Eleanora Niera, 1922–2018) was an American country and sacred music guitarist, singer, and songwriter who, alongside her husband Charles "Rex" Parker, spent more than half a century as a prominent broadcasting fixture in West Virginia. The daughter of Spanish immigrants, she launched her professional entertainment career the day after her August 1941 wedding, establishing the duo "Rex and Eleanor" on WHIS radio in Bluefield. Over the next two decades, she played rhythm guitar accompaniment and sang on daily radio programs across stations like WOAY and WCHS, moving into regional television during the 1950s and recording original numbers such as "Moonlight on West Virginia" and "Build Your Treasures in Heaven". Following a religious conversion in 1959, the duo ceased playing secular country music and reorganized alongside their daughters, Conizene and Rexana, into The Parker Family, performing exclusively sacred gospel music and hosting the live, long-running weekly program Songs for Salvation on WOAY-TV throughout the 1960s and 1970s.
In the newsletter
- No. 28 January 2002