![\"Ryan](\"https:\/\/www2.baylor.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/12\/linedad-dec15.jpg\")
<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Baylor junior Ryan Parker doesn\u2019t look like your typical college student. His hair is neatly parted and groomed, his voice self-assured, and his eyes wise. His fellow members of Baylor Chamber<\/a>\u00a0have picked up on these traits and dubbed him \u201cLine Dad.\u201d As a Chamberman, one of his responsibilities is\u00a0going over the rules of running the Baylor Line<\/a> with freshmen before each home game. The 18-year-olds\u00a0in the Line tend to ask him the same question over and over: \u201cHey man, why are you so old?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201c\u2019Well, I\u2019m a veteran.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n Parker\u00a0joined Baylor Chamber as a sophomore at Baylor — back in 2007. \u201cIt was right up my alley,\u201d he says. \u201cFirst off, Baylor\u2019s a great place and to serve and help. That to me is just a natural thing. But there are a lot of neat things you can do as a part of Chamber. You get to throw Homecoming<\/a> and Family Weekend<\/a> and Diadeloso<\/a>, hang banners in the middle of the night, stuff like that.\u201d<\/p>\n Though he loved Baylor, reality began to\u00a0set in\u00a0toward the end of his sophomore\u00a0year. Taking on more loans wasn\u2019t an option, and\u00a0transferring schools sounded even crazier. But at the back of his mind, he\u2019d always considered the military as an option. Soon enough, he was a U.S. Navy nuclear power engineer on an aircraft carrier in Japan.<\/p>\n During his six years of Naval service, Parker enjoyed a life that was vastly different from his life as a student — but he never forgot about Baylor.\u00a0\u201cI remember being on a train in Tokyo when Robert Griffin won the Heisman, watching it on my phone waiting for my next stop,\u201d he says.\u00a0\u201cAnd if a Baylor game would be on TV, I\u2019d usually be asleep because it was like 2 in the morning. But people knew to come wake me up, and I would get out of bed, watch the game, and go back to bed.”<\/p>\n Eventually, Parker\u00a0decided he was ready to return to civilian life. He had proposed to his girlfriend (a 2010 Baylor graduate), and unsure of his next step in life, he turned to his future wife. \u201cAmanda said something to me that just rang so true. She said, \u2018You\u2019re not gonna be happy unless you go back to Baylor.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n And so here he is, back at Baylor, majoring in philosophy — and\u00a0a happy Line Dad.<\/p>\n Sic \u2019em, Ryan!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Baylor junior Ryan Parker doesn\u2019t look like your typical college student. His hair is neatly parted and groomed, his voice self-assured, and his eyes wise. His fellow members of Baylor Chamber\u00a0have picked up on these traits and dubbed him \u201cLine Dad.\u201d As a Chamberman, one of his responsibilities is\u00a0going over the rules of running the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-17506","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-extraordinary-stories","category-student-life"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www2.baylor.edu\/baylorproud\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17506","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www2.baylor.edu\/baylorproud\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www2.baylor.edu\/baylorproud\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www2.baylor.edu\/baylorproud\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www2.baylor.edu\/baylorproud\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17506"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www2.baylor.edu\/baylorproud\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17506\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www2.baylor.edu\/baylorproud\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17506"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www2.baylor.edu\/baylorproud\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17506"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www2.baylor.edu\/baylorproud\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17506"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}