Marianne Walker, local author, educator and co-founder of St. Anthony’s Hospice, died Thursday. She was 91.
Walker’s friend, Gail King, said it was a “huge loss” for Henderson. King, herself a successful writer, said she hoped Walker is remembered for more than her writing, namely her work in bringing St. Anthony’s Hospice to Henderson. Walker worked with former First United Methodist Church minister John Conn to get hospice started locally.
“It was a huge accomplishment,” King said. “Her contributions to hospice can’t be overstated.”
The first time King encountered Walker was decades ago. She was at Barret Manual Training High School and had gone on a band trip to New Orleans. Also on the trip was classmate, Jimmy Walker, the younger brother of Ulvester Walker, who was studying law at Tulane University at the time.
King said Ulvester brought Marianne to meet the group during the trip, and her beauty and sophistication was something she’d not seen before.
“We were all terribly impressed that Jimmy Walker’s brother had come up with a woman of this manner,” King said. “We had never seen someone so sophisticated in our life.”
Walker’s writing career didn’t take off till the 1980s, when she first began writing articles for the Louisville Courier-Journal Sunday Magazine. Later she wrote a book about “Gone with the Wind” author Margaret Mitchell titled “Margaret Mitchell & John Marsh: The Love Story Behind Gone with the Wind.”
King said Walker had managed to meet and then earn the trust of a family member of Mitchell’s, who then gave her a trove of Marsh’s and Mitchell’s letters. The letters and then subsequent interviews with family members were the basis of the book.
It was a researcher-like doggedness that helped Walker become a successful writer, according to King.
“She dug into things, and she wouldn’t let go,” King said.
She often spoke about Mitchell and “Gone with the Wind” after that, including at the Henderson County Public Library.
Donald Wathen, the library’s director at the time, remembers the subject of the book as something that hadn’t been covered. “And she covered it well,” Wathen said.
After her first book, she wrote three more, according to her obituary. Two of those were sports-related books, a topic about which she knew very little.
“No, no, no,” King said when asked if she was a sports fan. She knew nothing about sports, King said, but once she got into her research, she wrote excellent books.
“When Cuba Conquered Kentucky” tells the story of the small-town Cuba High School Cubs winning the Kentucky high school basketball state championship in 1952.
She also wrote a biography with former University of Kentucky basketball coach Joe B. Hall titled “Coach Hall: My Life On and Off the Court.”
Bob Park was the dean of students at Henderson Community College when Walker taught at the school. He called her a “master teacher” who was “not only an educator but a community servant.”
There were many other things Walker was good at, such as cooking, and she seemed to have friends from different groups all over the community, King said.
“She had a huge variety of friends,” King said.
“She was a treasure for Henderson,” King said. “We’ll miss her.”
To read Walker’s obituary, click here.
