Born in 1943 in Hattiesburg, Mississippi, as the youngest of four children, Parks was raised in Lake Charles, Louisiana. His older brothers played brass instruments. His father Richard Hill Parks III was a doctor who served as chief psychiatric officer in the Dachau liberation reprisals. Having studied with Karl Menninger, Richard's specific medical specialties were neurology and psychiatry, and he was the first doctor to admit African-American patients to a white southern hospital. Richard was also a part-time clarinetist and had a dance band to get through med school: Dick Parks and His White Swan Serenaders. Van Dyke's mother was a Hebraic scholar.