Willie "Bill" Walker

Willie ‘Bill’ Walker liked to eat dessert first, read the comics before the news, and kept a $100 bill stashed in his wallet, “just in case.” A dedicated family man, he, appropriately, passed away on Father’s Day.

Bill was born in Montgomery County, Georgia in 1931. The son of a sharecropper, James Walker, and his mother Mattie Stephens, he was the youngest of eleven kids. After the death of his father, he moved to Macon, Georgia with his mother and siblings. Bill was the first and only member of his family to leave Georgia, joining the Navy at the age of seventeen.

The Navy took Bill to the west coast, where his ship put in for repairs at Hunter’s Point Naval Shipyard in San Francisco. There, he met Peggy Joyce Hardin at Bayview Baptist Church. That led to a marriage in 1953 that would last 70 years, and take the couple from San Francisco, to Antioch, California, and then in 1964, to Reedsport, Oregon. They spent the next 55 years in Reedsport raising their three kids; Jim (Robin Andrew), Laurie, (George Langdon), and Kirk (Terri Horst) and being actively engaged in their beloved coastal community. Bill worked as a millwright and supervisor for International Paper Company, retiring in 1991. He and Peggy were also long-time members of Highlands Baptist Church, where Bill served as a Deacon, (he was first ordained as a Deacon at Immanuel Baptist Church in Antioch when he was just twenty-three years old.) Bill also served as city councilman in Reedsport, was active with Gideons International, and a member of the Veterans of Foreign Wars. In 2018, Bill and Peggy moved to Keizer, Oregon.

Bill Walker was a man you could count on, a devoted husband and father, loved by his family and friends, quick with a laugh and a joke, and a man of faith who leaves an incredible legacy. He is survived by the love of his life, his wife, Peggy, his children, twelve grandchildren, and eleven great grandchildren.

Our love and appreciation go out to the staff of the Village at Keizer Ridge and Serenity Hospice in Salem for their amazing care and understanding, especially during the last months of Bill’s amazing journey. A Celebration of Life will be held for friends and family on August 5 in Salem. For more info, please contact any family member. No gifts or flowers please. A gift to your favorite charity if you wish. I Timothy 4:7-8. Amen.