Kathleen "Kathy" Walker Green

Kathleen Anne Walker Green was born in Beaumont, Texas on January 30, 1946, to Jack R. Walker and Grace Casey Walker. For more than 77 years, Kathy lived her life in dedicated service to her family, her church, her many friends and the patients in her care as a Pharmacist.

When Kathy turned ten, she helped her parents welcome her sister, Ninette. The difference in their ages did nothing to separate them from life-long sisterly bonds and friendship. Throughout her school years, Kathy could be found working behind the counter at the Beaumont Pharmacy, owned by her doting grandfather, Pappy (John R. Walker). Kathy was a proud member of the Beaumont High School Class of 1964, where she enjoyed playing in the orchestra. Her father, Jack, tried to encourage her to play the piccolo, but in her one and only act of teenage rebellion, she chose to play two instruments – the string bass and the harp. Both instruments were larger than Kathy who stood at five feet, one inch tall, but that did not prevent her from excelling in her musicianship.

After her years of experience working in the pharmacy alongside her grandfather, no one was surprised when Kathy went to college to become a Pharmacist. She studied first at Lamar University, where she pledged Zeta Tau Alpha, and then she transferred to the Pharmacy School at the University of Houston. In pharmacy school, Kathy met Liz Tolliver, and they became fast friends as they huddled over their textbooks in the basement laundry room, their favorite spot to study. Together, Kathy and Liz graduated in 1969, two of only five women in their class of about 200 pharmacy graduates.

Shortly after graduation, Kathy returned to Beaumont where she enjoyed living in one of the apartments on the first floor of her childhood home at the corner of Hazel and Sixth Streets. While enjoying her first job at Baptist Hospital, she was still searching for a special person with whom she could build a family of her own. With the help of a blind date arranged by her father’s secretary at Mobil, Kathy met her darling Pat Green, a newly minted chemical engineer from the University of Kentucky. In a whirlwind love story, Kathy quickly helped Pat to forget his bachelor ways, and the couple became engaged within 6 months of their first date. They married on July 4, 1970, and celebrated every one of their 50 wedding anniversaries with fireworks.

In 1976, Pat and Kathy welcomed their first daughter Amanda. Three years later, Rebecca arrived, and she quickly received the nickname “Peanut” from her beloved Dad. With their family complete, Pat and Kathy began their great migration with Pat’s career moving the family from Beaumont to Houston, and then to Virginia and New York, before returning to Texas with a move to San Antonio. After a decade in San Antonio, the family returned to Beaumont in 1990, where Pat and Kathy remained until 2019. With every move, Kathy quickly settled her family, and poured herself into countless hours of volunteer work with the girls’ schools and the family’s church homes. She also returned to her career in pharmacy in the late 1980s, and ultimately worked alongside her best friend Liz in the pharmacy at the Beaumont Veterans’ Affairs Outpatient Clinic until she retired in 2005.

Always people of great faith, Kathy and Pat flourished in their spirituality and in their volunteerism, especially in their retirement. First United Methodist Church in Beaumont was always the Green family’s home church, filled with life-long friends and many, many memories of Oyster Suppers, church-wide Thanksgiving meals, Altar Guild, school supply drives, estate sales, Kairos Kitchen meals for area homeless, assignments at Some Other Place, family retreat weekends at Lakeview Methodist Camp, evangelism, stewardship campaigns, and the preparation of Communion elements, which Pat, Kathy and the girls often worked on as a family.

Kathy was preceded in death by her beloved husband of 50 years, Robert Patrick Green in March, 2021, and by her parents Jack and Grace Walker, who passed away in 1981 and 1998, respectively. She is survived by daughter Amanda Grace Green, of Kingwood, Texas, and her children Jackson, Abigail and Noah Snowden; daughter Rebecca Green Ray and son-in-law James-Ryan Ray of Conroe, Texas, and their children Jacob and Samuel Ray; sister Ninette Walker Teel and brother-in-law David Clark Teel, and their children Charles and Elisabeth; numerous cousins on both the Casey and Walker sides of her family; and her recently-wed husband, Donald D. Monkres, who was a great source of comfort to Kathy in her final months.

In lieu of flowers, gifts may be made to Some Other Place or First United Methodist Church in Beaumont, Texas.