The ball had magic in it.

Lois Herring Parker never touched a basketball, never considered playing the game, until she tried out for her school team as an eighth-grader.

It was the 1940s. Her dad, a textile worker, had moved the family from Lakeview, S.C., when she was 2, because of work, and Parker had developed a deep affection for Mount Holly.

She wanted to represent the school and her community.

The moment she picked up that basketball, in an old un-air-conditioned gym, her life changed; she began a six-decade ride that brought trophies, a professional contract, a gold medal and not one, but two, inductions into the Mount Holly Sports Hall of Fame.

“When I went out and made the first team, I’d never played. God just gave me talent. And when I went out on the court and tried out, I loved the game,” Parker, 85, said from her home in Raleigh, where she lives with her husband, Eddie. “I didn’t even know they kept how many points were scored during a game. You know, when you love the sport and love your teammates, you wanted to win for them and for Mount Holly High School.”

Parker was a 5-foot-9 forward, and always team captain.

She was MVP of the Little Eight Conference tournament in 1947, her senior year.

She was the second-highest scorer in the conference as a senior.

Her Hawkettes teams of 1944-45, 1945-46 and 1946-47 had a combined record of 40-9-4 and tied for the conference title in 1946.

She was inducted into the Hall of Fame in 2013 with her teams – the Hawkettes of the 1940s.

This year, she is being inducted as an individual.

It wasn’t just basketball that occupied her at school – Parker squeezed in time for cheerleading, during football season. “And at that time, we could go downtown at 1 o’clock and they’d block off the streets, and we’d cheer down there. Then we’d cheer on the steps of the high school,” she said. “It was so different back then.”

After graduation, Parker played professionally for the Hanes Hosiery team in Winston-Salem, then for Queen City Trailways and, later, Paw Creek American Legion.

At age 66, as the oldest member of her North Carolina Senior Olympics team – after a 46-year layoff from the sport – she won a gold medal.

“I don’t know what my life would have been like without basketball,” she said. “Living in Mount Holly was such a privilege and such a blessing.”

A favorite memory is the 1947 conference final. Parker was on the foul line in the final minute. The title depended on her; the crowd noise was deafening. 

“The referee took the ball out of my hands, placed the ball on the floor, put his foot on the ball and placed his finger on his mouth and looked at the spectators,” she said. “It got so quiet you could hear a pin drop. I made the two shots, and we won the game.

“They gave me a little silver basketball that said ‘MVP 1947,’ but my mother and daddy’s home burned, so I lost that.”

It wasn’t all she lost.

“The house that we lived in for over 15 years, we were flooded three times in 15 months and they had to tear our house down. So, I’ve been through three floods, four car wrecks – they hit us – but I’m still laughing,” she said.

“God is good.”

She can tell those stories calmly, without bitterness. And that is where the profile of Lois Parker the athlete expands to include Lois Parker the Christian.

“With the grace of God,” she said. “Everything is possible.”

Pro ball with the Hanes Hosiery team gave Parker’s life story a chapter of experience away from her beloved Mount Holly. But it did not give her any desire to venture farther away for long.

“They gave you a job; I worked back then with computers coming on the market. We always had a nurse that went on our trips. We were very well-protected,” she said. “They were so good to me.

“I got a letter from (baseball legend) Ted Williams – said he was going to start a girls basketball team. He got my name from the paper. I didn’t want to travel like that – I’d never been anywhere, except Myrtle Beach with my parents, and I was only 17 years old. I didn’t answer that letter.”

One day, Hanes Hosiery was playing a team from Pittsburgh when Parker went for a loose ball and her knee went sideways. Decades later, she had knee replacement surgery. “It sounded like a gun going off. The doctor said he didn’t know how I even put my foot on the floor – that’s how bad it was. I did the whole ball of wax,” she said. “But God is good to me.”

She came home to a job at First State Bank & Trust Co., in downtown Mount Holly, across the street from Charlie’s drug store.  

She was there 12 years.

“I loved my customers, and I cried when we had to move to Raleigh, because Mount Holly is a special place,” she said.

She and her husband owned Parker’s Engraving, which manufactured and engraved stationery – one of only 200 companies in the country to do hand-engraving. They bought the company building in 1985 – the former Raleigh Nehi Bottling Company on Hillsborough Street – which is designated an historic landmark by the Wake County Historic Preservation Commission.

Life in Raleigh gave Parker opportunities to work with her faith, to help others. She taught Sunday School at Emmanuel Baptist Church. Her daughter married a minister. Her son is a deacon in his church and a Sunday School teacher.

And Anne Graham Lotz, daughter of Rev. Billy Graham, chose Parker to lead one of her Bible study programs. “You start in Genesis and go through Revelation. Each lady has 15 in her group, and you go through the whole year,” she said.

Mostly now, though, Parker is a full-time grandma – she has four grandchildren and four great-grandchildren. “And they’re all a blessing,” she said. “They all go to church. They all love the Lord.

“All we do now is go to church, and go see our great-grandchildren play ball: one plays soccer, one plays baseball, one plays coach-pitch and the other, she swims.

“In fact, when I got the call about the (Hall of Fame) banquet this year, I told them, ‘Can you hold a minute? My grandson’s up to bat…’”

She is fond of the saying “what goes around, comes around.”

And it all began with a basketball, and team try-out in eighth grade.

“By my playing basketball all those years, it got me playing professionally,” she said. “And my having Christian parents, that led to me being a leader in Bible study.

“God is good to me.”