To most of the world, he was Gordon Parks, called a “Renaissance man” to the point it was cliche.

He was a poet, author, photographer, painter, music composer, movie director, activist and, somewhere deep in his heart, a Kansan.

To Lawrence resident Charles Parks, the man with the bright white hair and mustache – who died Tuesday at age 93 – was simply Uncle Gordon.

“Him being recognized has been an inspiration to me and my cousins in helping us in raising our kids,” Charles Parks says. “He’s been a beacon for us – if they work hard, they can do anything in life.”

A funeral service for Gordon Parks will be Tuesday in New York. Another service is scheduled for Thursday in Fort Scott, where Parks was born and spent the first 16 years of his life.

Though those years in Kansas were filled with racism, and though Parks drew international acclaim for his life’s work without any formal training, his great-nephew says his great-uncle never lost touch with his Kansas roots.

The late photojournalist Gordon Parks hams it up for fellow photographers following a portrait session featuring himself and close to 100 other prominent black photographers in this Nov. 30, 2002, file photo, in Harlem.

Charles Parks offers this story: Once he went to visit Uncle Gordon in Manhattan, when he was on a trip back to Kansas.

“He was in the hotel restaurant eating catfish for breakfast,” Charles Parks recalls with a laugh. “He said he’d been dying to get some good Kansas catfish.”

Kansas tension

For much of his life, Gordon Parks’ relationship with his home state was distant, a result of the racism and bigotry he faced growing up.

Parks, one of 15 children, spent little time in Kansas after he left at age 16, a year after his mother died.

“There was a time when I never wanted to see Kansas again,” he said during a 1993 visit to Kansas University.

Renate Mai-Dalton of Lawrence remembers hearing Parks speak in Lawrence in 1993. That visit turned into a friendship between Mai-Dalton and Parks.

“It was absolutely clear that his heart was bleeding for the pain he had experienced in Kansas,” Mai-Dalton says. “It’s hard to imagine. For someone of his stature to be hurt like that, it speaks to his sensitivity and feeling of justice.”

Flowers left at an exhibit honoring Gordon Parks at Stauffer-Flint Hall mark Parks' death last week. The exhibit was organized by Kansas University's journalism school when Parks was honored by the William Allen White Foundation last month.

In particular, Parks was offended by maintenance at the cemetery in Fort Scott. His parents were buried in what was previously the black section of the cemetery, and he felt it hadn’t been cared for as well as the white section.

Mai-Dalton was so moved by the speech she contacted the cemetery board and, in 1994, began working with locals to plant trees and shrubbery at the site.

“Every year, I would send Dr. Parks pictures and say, ‘Look, this is getting much better,'” she says of the cemetery. She also visited him several times in New York.

Around the same time, Fort Scott residents began reaching out to Parks to mend fences, erecting signs proclaiming Fort Scott as the home of Gordon Parks and creating a photography contest in his honor.

Over time, Parks made amends with Fort Scott and Kansas. During a 2004 visit to Fort Scott, he told family members he planned to be buried there, according to Charles Parks. He made that decision public last month during his last interview, in a videotape shown as he received the William Allen White Citation at KU.

“He was always ambivalent or grieving about what to do” about his burial plans, Mai-Dalton says. “It was a beautiful closure, when I saw the video.”

His legacy

“The Learning Tree,” the title of Parks’ autobiography and film, refers to advice his mother gave him as a child. She said Kansas was a “learning tree,” with both good and bad fruit, and that he’d learn from people no matter where he lived.

In his death, Parks has left a sort of learning tree of his own, through both his life and his works.

His camera, which he called a “weapon against poverty and racism,” first gained him fame. In 1948, was hired as Life magazine’s first black photographer and is best remembered for photographing poor black workers, the Black Muslim movement, gangs and fashion.

Some of his photos are on exhibit through March 19 at KU’s Spencer Museum of Art.

“He brings a unique perspective to the American coffee table,” says Brett Knappe, a KU doctoral student at the museum. “(Life) wasn’t specifically targeted to any one group, and so by reaching that great audience, he was able to show his unique perspective, this cultural mirror on race and class and economics that he was bringing to his photography.”

‘Next horizon’

In the 1960s, Parks began writing memoirs and other books and poetry. In addition to “The Learning Tree,” he authored three other autobiographies.

“Rather than restate what he did before, he was using that as a jumping-off point of where he is then in his life,” says John Edgar Tidwell, a KU professor of English. “His constant challenge was to see what’s over the next horizon.”

In 1969, Parks became the first black director for a major Hollywood movie when he directed “The Learning Tree.” He followed that film up with “Shaft.”

“He was learning as he went along,” says John Tibbetts, a KU associate professor of theater and film. “It was a workmanlike job. Nobody’s going to win awards for (Parks’ movies). But it shows he’s a guy who’s extremely adept at learning new challenges and coping with a new environment.”

Parks eventually entered another new environment, when he began composing music. At first, because he didn’t have musical training, he devised his own musical notation system. He wrote the score to “The Learning Tree,” as well as a ballet about Martin Luther King Jr. and other works.

‘Came from within’

Maryemma Graham, a KU professor of English, backs away from calling Parks a “Renaissance man.” Parks himself didn’t like that characterization, some say.

“It’s almost as if it’s what did he NOT do, not what DID he do,” she says. “We like the idea of a ‘Renaissance man,” and that becomes a slot to put him into. I like to think of him as someone who wanted to push the boundaries of art. He was an artist, in the broadest sense of the word ‘artist.'”

Ann Brill, the KU journalism dean who was present at Parks’ last interview, says Parks remained a gracious host, even in the last months of his life.

“When you looked around his apartment and you saw the awards and pictures of him with all of these famous people, I was just thinking, this is someone who has lived this most incredible life,” Brill says. “He was more than a photojournalist, more than a director, more than a composer. And all of this kind of came from within.”