Harriet Walker

Harriet Leone Walker was born in Freetown, Sierra Leone, West Africa, of missionary parents in 1927. She was homeschooled with her brother and sister until she reached the age of ten when her parents returned to the United States and her father accepted the pastorate of the United Brethren Church in Coffeyville, Kansas.

In 1945 after completing high school in Coffeyville, she entered the denominational college in York, Nebraska. During her junior and senior years at York College, she was editor of the college newspaper. She graduated with honors in the class of 1949. Some years later further education at the University of Idaho earned her M.A. and Ph.D. degrees in Foundations of Education.

In June of 1949, she married Harold Walker, a York College classmate who had returned to college after serving as a B-29 pilot in World War II. With a few exceptions, she and her husband dedicated their professional years to public education. An example of an exception would be the year in Alaska described in this book. At that time their first son was born. He was joined later by two brothers and a sister.

During the early years of her marriage, Harriet Walker wrote articles for church and children's publications and for some time wrote the Sunday night programs used across the denomination for intermediate Youth Fellowship meetings. But her delight was in letter writing. Even in college, she had followed the practice of keeping carbons of letters that she typed. Through the years the material in her files changed from carbon copies of typed letters to computer copies and finally to e-mail printouts. Now in her retirement years, she used these files as resource material even as she added to them through letters she continued to write to family and friends.