WWW arkcity.net

By FOSS FARRAR
Traveler Staff Writer

P.J. Parmar lived in a children's home in India from the time she was in the seventh grade until she graduated from college. She hasn't forgotten the generosity of the home's benefactors who paid her way through nursing school.

"Our vision was to have an orphanage," said Parmar, who runs the Regency Court Inn in Arkansas City with her husband, Johnnie.

The Parmars fulfilled their dream in January, when they returned to their native India to open a home for 20 children. It is on the top floor of a non-denominational Christian church pastor's home.

Listed as the home's founders, the Parmars contribute $700 a month to its upkeep, P.J. Parmar said.

"This is our way to give something back," she said. "God has blessed us."

P.J. and Johnnie Parmar are finishing an $800,000 renovation of the Regency Court, a project they have worked on for a little more than a year. The renovation was virtually complete by the end of March, and Best Western officials were scheduled to visit for a certification inspection in early May.

"We've made extensive improvements," P.J. Parmar said. "Everything is new."

The hotel's 88 rooms have new furniture, TVs and tile in bathrooms. All bathtubs were being refinished. Throughout the hotel, the walls were refinished and repainted and floors were outfitted with new coverings.

Now under new management, the hotel restaurant and lounge were extensively renovated, and the kitchen was revamped. The new establishment, Campbell's Garden Restaurant and Lounge, opened March 6.

By March, the hotel's business had picked up, Johnnie Parmar said. Per-day room rentals increased in part because railroad workers stay at the hotel regularly.

The Parmars' success in business came at the cost of years of struggle and hard work, they said. When they first arrived in this country in 1990, they brought few possessions with them.

"We came with only two suitcases and nobody to meet us at the airport," P.J. Parmar said.

She remains grateful for her nursing education, which was funded by German and Australian contributors to the children's home where she grew up in India.

"They paid for my nursing degree," she said. "I worked as a nurse for 18 years."

After Johnnie and P.J. Parmar arrived in 1990 in Texas, she worked as a nurse in Galveston while he worked as a computer operator. Then they operated a laundromat in the Houston area. Eventually, they moved to Woodward, Okla., where they bought a motel, before moving to Ark City in March 2005.

The new children's home they founded in India is providing education, health care, food and clothing for the kids who live there, P.J. Parmar said.