The Story Behind Left Eye’s “Parron” Tattoo
It was the summer of 1997.
TLC’s history-making CrazySexyCool LP was a wrap and the girls were gearing up to work on their next album. In the meantime, Left Eye kept her name in the spotlight recording and shooting the “Not Tonight’ (Remix) music video with Lil’ Kim, Missy Elliott, Da Brat, and Angie Martinez.
To celebrate, Left Eye decided to have a party at Atlanta’s Lake Lanier for music executive(and rumored boyfriend) Lance “Un” Rivera. She had become close with Rivera during the “Not Tonight’ (Remix) project. Party attendees included Lisa, her sister Raina, ex-stepfather Sherman Washington, and numerous other family members and friends.
Lisa’s step-brother Parron was also in attendance, making the trek from Philadelphia to Atlanta with his adopted father, Sherman Washington. Parron was just 18 years old, an honor student who had just graduated from high school that week. According to Lisa’s brother Ron, “After my father died, my mother remarried a man named Sherman Washington. I call him 2-Dad cuz he is my second father. He had a newphew, Parron Monroe Deas. Parron’s mother died and his grandmother also. He didn’t know his father. So Sherman adopted Parron, making him his adopted son – and to me, Lisa, and Raina making him our step-brother.” According to Ron, “2-Dad was driving to Atlanta and Parron wanted to go cuz he hadn’t seen Lisa or Raina in awhile. I didn’t go cuz I started a new job in Philly.”
The group rented some SeaDoo jet ski’s for some fun on the lake in the hot Atlanta sun. “Parron didn’t want to put on his life vest. He got on the Seadoo with Porshe [a friend of Lisa’s sister Raina] and rode out. No one saw what happened. Porshe came back screaming saying Parron went under and he didn’t come back up,” Lisa’s brother Ron Lopes explains. According to reports, neither Porshe nor Parron were wearing life jackets when Parron fell off the Seadoo. It took three days for the search party to find his body.
“Friends tell me that Left Eye thought there was a curse on her. It seemed that something always happened to set her back,” explains Sister 2 Sister magazine editor Jamie Foster Brown. A truly tragic accident.
RIP Parron Monroe Deas
via Cyber TLC World