GENESEO – The following is an email submitted by William Hess to the GeneseeSun.com for publication. The attitudes and ideas expressed below should not be interpreted as the opinion of the GeneseeSun.com.
“Sun
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If I close my eyes just long enough, it’s summer again in Geneseo, the students have just left, and quietude has settled in the Valley. The bulk of Dr. Walker’s garden is in bloom, and requires near daily maintenance, each species of plant getting just what it needs to blossom along side its neighbors, and she’s asked me to tend her garden once more.
I open my eyes and it’s winter in Montana, the mountain flowers buried so deep, and then Dr. Walker passes from this world.
I, like so many others, was more than shocked to hear of her passing, the phone call breaking up a lazy Sunday afternoon in Missoula. I, like so many others, was more than lucky to find myself in her classroom not once, but twice, and in her home, not once, but hundreds of times throughout my four years in Geneseo.
Her willingness to let students and community members into her home set her apart from her colleagues at the university, it was in fact one of her defining characteristics—her back-porch quickly becoming as much a community space as a vestibule from her home to her garden, and vice-versa.
What made her so special to me and many others was her prowess in the classroom. For 47 years, she demanded excellence from her students, set the bar just out of reach, and then encouraged creative ways to grasp it. She only accepted polished, ‘credible’ work and excoriated academic laziness—often publicly.
Losing Dr. Walker is a loss not just to her students, but everyone in the Genesee Valley—her tireless philanthropy and charitable grace manifesting in her decision to offer a home for foster children time and time again. Her closeness with the movers and shakers of the town and village manifesting in her decision to introduce me to them when she thought I was ready, often on loan for gardening projects.
Even her harshest critics are doubtlessly saddened by her passing. She made the greatest sparring partner we can hope for: profoundly well-informed, ruthlessly sharp, she never hesitated to sink scalpel-like teeth into the softest bits of an argument, exposing in one chomp the flaws of its core.
Dr. Walker’s toughness was ultimately outpaced by her Love for her students. Her occasional shortness outmatched by what seems to have been her greatest motivating force: a desire to see each student get exactly what they need to blossom together.
The cantankerous legends surrounding her in the classroom are in discord with her actual, legendary status. No other professor sacrificed as much for her students. No other professor could have steeled me against the difficulties of grad school, of life outside our small shared valley. She taught so many how to seize their dreams while refraining from smugness, she assured so many that its okay to relocate thousands of miles from home, so long as you remember where you came from, so long as you remember who made you.
Dr. Julia Walker did so much more than this, for so many more than me. We who grieve would do well to remember this fact: Her work is not done, her wisdom not finished. No matter what you learned from her, Our Great Task is to live up to the expectations she had for each of us, to blossom along with our neighbors.
If I close my eyes long enough, its early summer in Geneseo. Her dogs are barking and everything is in bloom. She’s asked me to tend her garden once more.
(Photo/William Hess)