Carson High School senior Waylon Parr helps a customer at his family’s thrift store Goods for Charity.
Photo by Jessica Garcia.
Carson High School senior Waylon Parr has been tapping into a multitude of talents in the hope of encouraging his peers to do the same.
Parr has launched his own radio show “Waylon’s World” on which he features fellow students and talks about their dreams. His sitcom “Benny the Brit” about a British exchange student exploring the American lifestyle demonstrates his sense of humor. He also helps with a family effort in running a local thrift shop away from school.
“I hope that they can understand that there's a lot of kids who have talents that no one even knows about,” Parr said of young entrepreneurs like himself. “Like, there's a whole world of just absolute prodigies. I feel like that that so many are unrecognized, so I feel like when you look at these people, you’ve got to look at them in a different perspective.”
Parr said it was surprising to have a teacher encourage him to take the leap into radio.
“He said it kind of as a passive thing,” Parr said. “It was like, ‘You want to be a radio host?’ And then it just kind of happened, and I’m really happy with where it is now.”
Parr said he chooses as guests those who often are not recognized for their talents.
“The kids I pick are kind of, I’d say, undervalued talent here in Carson City, and I try to give them a voice,” he said. “I’ll obviously do my research and ask them questions based on what they do.”
Carson High social studies teacher Will Houk said Parr’s writing stood out and he hoped to inspire him to pursue an interest in multimedia. Houk has run a radio show for KNVC 95.1 in Carson City for about seven years and said station manager Steve Funk was looking for student voices to run a show. Parr’s “Benny the Brit” series made him a natural fit.
“I was really impressed with the writing that he did, the kind of the storyboarding, the cinematography of the shots that he was doing,” Houk said. “You could just tell that that Waylon was a super talented kid.”
Houk asked if he would be interested in training and the technical aspects of running a show, including how the computer works and preparing with microphones, headphones and interviews with guests. Now, Houk said, he believes Parr has the process down with a creative eye as he runs “Waylon’s World” on the station.
“I think Waylon is doing a fantastic job … he writes all the questions and we’ve developed this rapport where he and his brother come in and they’re in the second hour — we have a two-hour radio show — and he kind of shows the guests around the radio station, gets them comfortable, sits them down, puts a microphone in front of them, and he just catches on so quick,” he said. “He’s a really, really bright kid.”
Additionally, Parr helps with his family’s thrift store Goods for Charity in Carson City, run with the help of his father and brother Jason and Dean Parr. The store offers affordable clothing and items, and he offers a space with a sewing machine for people who are interested in creating their own fashions that he hopes to expand in the future.
For a self-described introvert, Parr said it’s important to help his friends feel confident and included and to bring a little more humor where he can. The recently crowned Winterfest King at Carson High also served as one of the emcees for the school’s talent show this month.
“I lived in Southern California for like 13 years, and I moved here about four years ago, around COVID,” he said. “But since then, I've made a tremendous amount of progress and my goal is to help make Carson City a more entertaining place.”
Parr plans to study journalism at the University of Nevada, Reno. Among his accomplishments, he also put together a documentary “9000” focusing on local athlete Tristan Rutledge and his journey to the Nike Nationals track meet, available on YouTube.
“There's a million different things he could do because he's just really bright and talented and driven, and no matter what area he goes into, I know he's going to be successful,” Houk said of Parr.