medicine. Park, Sr., served on the board of directors of the private research
laboratory from 1984 until his death, and Park, Jr. currently serves on the
Boyce Thompson Institute board as a vice chairman.
CHAPTER 31: A NEW BEGINNING
TRIAD—a group of three persons; three related things that form a
group; three people considered as a unit; a union of three.
There are also a couple of other definitions of Triad, one having to do
with music, “a chord of notes,” and the other, a secret Chinese
organization involved in illegal activities such as selling drugs. But I can
assure you that our new family foundation is not heavily into music and
definitely not into drugs, except for the kind that cure human ailments and
illnesses as a result of scientific research on plants and the resulting
discoveries.
We settled on “Triad” because it means a union of three. The three of
us wanted to protect and honor my father’s heritage by calling ourselves
the “Roy H. Park Foundation,” but in the last face-to-face meeting we had
with the other five Park trustees, my mother was opposed to this. She said
I could name it the “Roy H. Park, Jr. Foundation,” but it wasn’t my hard-
earned money that funded it, so the Park Foundation will eventually be run
by family and outside trustees who do not carry his name or never knew
the founder.
As reported in the Cornell Chronicle, the foundation’s new name “ ‘
reflects the desire of the Triad directors to honor the legacy of my father,’
explained Roy H. Park, Jr., president and chairman of Triad. Serving as
directors and officers of the Triad Foundation are Park, Jr. and his
children, Roy H. Park, III, and Elizabeth Park Fowler. The unit of three
inspired the name Triad as well as the foundation’s logo, a pyramid
transected into three parts by the letter T.”
“We chose ‘Carolina Blue’ for our logo, since six members of the
family attended The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. This blue
is the color of the sky and the oceans covering over 70 percent of our
planet. The logo also represents the three of us living in three key states
equally spaced along the East Coast, where my father conducted most of
his business.
