A Love of Learning, a Family Legacy

Driven by a desire to get as far away from Oklahoma as possible while also moving as close to the ocean as possible, Anne Walker followed in her father’s footsteps to attend CST. She came for her M.Div. degree, and instead left with two master’s degrees and a Ph.D. Today, Anne directs the field education program at Phillips Theological Seminary in Tulsa, Oklahoma, where she supports students’ discernment process during a dedicated year in supervised ministry.

Decades earlier, Anne’s father, the Rev. Dr. Jerald Walker, made his journey from Oklahoma to Claremont. This son of a dairy farmer and a Cherokee native grew up in rural Oklahoma and earned his Doctor of Religion degree from the school in 1966. Anne and her father were deeply influenced by her paternal grandmother, Trula Tosh Jackson Walker — an avid reader and lover of both history and politics. She instilled a passion in them for learning and for advocating for indigenous and other marginalized peoples.

“The CST campus holds generations of memories for my family and me, and I am proud to carry on my father’s commitment to pastoral leadership that is ethically bound and culturally responsive,” Anne shared.

Anne’s call to seminary came after attending an Easter worship service with her parents at Bixby First United Methodist Church in Bixby, Oklahoma where she witnessed a female pastor in leadership. “I remember just sitting there thinking ‘Oh, I could do that.’” Her parents eagerly affirmed, and she soon headed to CST.  

While her plan was to get a Master of Divinity degree, a preaching assessment quickly changed that. “It just scared the living daylights out of me,” she explained. So, she changed directions and discovered feminist and womanist theological ethics and “a love for thinking about theology and culture.” 

Jerald had grown up attending Bixby UMC where his pastor continuously encouraged him to go into ministry. So, upon graduation from high school, he attended Oklahoma City University (with a full scholarship), then went on to the University of Chicago Divinity School, and finally to Claremont for his doctoral degree. 

One day while walking across campus, Anne had the revelation that CST’s “particular kind of theology and ethics” was, in fact, “the faith orientation” that her parents had nurtured in her. 

She says her time at CST helped to prepare her for her current work. “I learned how to interweave vocational discernment in a student’s theological education in an ongoing way, so a student is always thinking about how the elements of what they’re doing relate to their sense of call.” 

When Jerald was studying in Claremont, he served as a pastor at Claremont United Methodist Church, and upon graduation did community-based ministry with the Glide Foundation in San Francisco, a social justice organization associated with Glide Memorial United Methodist Church. 

Soon Jerald’s call led him and Anne’s mom, Virginia Walker, to move to Nebraska where he taught world religions and served as a chaplain at Nebraska Wesleyan University. Then, at the age of 28, Jerald was named president of John J. Pershing College in Beatrice, Nebraska. In 1979, the family returned to Oklahoma, where Jerald was appointed president of his alma mater, Oklahoma City University. 

When Jerald assumed the presidency there, the institution was financially strapped. However, during his tenure (as the longest-serving president in the school’s history) the endowment grew from $2.8 million in 1979 to more than $36 million in 1997. Within just five years of service, Jerald led the university to a balanced budget — which was sustained all of those years. 

His commitment to education went far beyond Oklahoma, though. While Anne recalls going to local churches with her father where he would invite young Oklahomans to consider a college education, Jerald was also establishing graduate programs around the world — in China, Hong Kong, Kuala Lumpur, Singapore, the United Kingdom, and beyond. Through the years, Jerald was also a prolific writer focusing his scholarship on political ethics and higher education.

He was honored with many awards in his lifetime, including Distinguished 4-H Club Alumnus in Oklahoma and Nebraska, Distinguished Humanitarian from the National Conference of Christians and Jews, induction into the Oklahoma Higher Education Hall of Fame, Outstanding Achievement in the Arts Award from The American Indian Heritage Center in Tulsa, the Cherokee National Medal of Honor, and CST’s Distinguished Alumni/ae Award.

“I think it just meant everything to him to be able to come back to Claremont and be recognized as a graduate who had done significant work. It was also really meaningful to him that I went there also,” Anne shared.

In 1996, at the age of 58, Jerald suffered a massive stroke, which changed all of their lives. With Jerald unable to continue working, Virginia became the source of strength in their family, Anne said. Jerald’s wife and two daughters did everything they could to help him remain intellectually stimulated and engaged, including listening to a lot of books together as well as plenty of Texas swing music. One of his favorites was Gene Autry. Jerald died in 2016 at the age of 78.

After her dad’s stroke, Anne took some time off to help her parents, and it truly changed her direction in life. It was during this time that she decided to attend seminary. As she reflected on her time at CST and her father’s legacy, she is grateful to “draw from a deep ancestral well of people who are persistent, resistant, creative, holistic survivors.”

She continued,

There is a way in which we exoticize, stereotype, and essentialize Native people’s experience, and so a lot of my current scholarship is around navigating hybrid identities like my own as a Cherokee and a white woman.  I want to disrupt those stereotypes, which serve as a source of dehumanization of Native people. That motivation comes from my father’s legacy, and is motivated by wanting my Cherokee/Choctaw child to live in a world where our identities are not defined by categories that force Native American people to perform our ethnicity in ways that are not indicative of who we are today.