Robert Joseph Parks was born on 1 April 1922 in Los Angeles, California. His father was petroleum engineer Joseph Burton Parks, his mother was Ruth (Feltz) Parks, and his brother was Jerome W. Parks. Bob Parks obtained his degree in electrical engineering from the California Institute of Technology, graduating in 1944. He then served in the US Army for two-and-a-half years, which included a posting to Vienna, Austria, as part of the Army of Occupation where he met his future wife Hanne Richter, an interpreter and the daughter of a professor at the Vienna Conservatory of Music. She and Parks would later have three sons. After leaving the army, Parks spent six months at Hughes Aircraft before starting work at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in April 1947.