US Navy Lt. William "Bill" Jefferson Walker was born in Newberry, South Carolina on November 27, 1915, the son of Avery Norris Walker (1885-1962) and Jessie Eugene Matheny (1893-1965). His father supported his family as an insurance agent in 1918 for the Life & Casualty of Tennessee. He would retire as a superintendent with the Palmetto Life Insurance Company after 33 years. Sadly, he was killed in an automobile accident on August 13, 1962, in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina from severe head and internal injuries.
His son Bill would graduate from high school in 1933 then enrolled in Furman College in Greenville, South Carolina. He was accepted into the US Naval Academy at Annapolis in 1935 and would graduate in the Class of 1939. Now commissioned as an Ensign he was assigned to the cruiser CA-39 USS Quincy from October 1939 to April 1941. After he volunteered for the naval flight program he was sent to NAS Pensacola for training. While stationed there he fell in love, like so many flight students before him, with one of their Gulf Coast young ladies by the name of Miss Carmen Lavada Marie Martin (1917-1993). She was the daughter of James Francis Martin (1863-1929) and Elizabeth B. Franks (1883-1962) who had married in 1903. Carmen was also a graduate of the Pensacola Nursing School and would become connected to the Gulf Coast Medical Center. In the meantime, the relationship with Lt. Walker soon led the dashing young pilot to the alter on February 23, 1943.
With the wedding now behind him and with a promotion as the executive squadron commander things were looking up for the South Carolinian. He was now stationed in Hertford, North Carolina at the Harvey Point Naval Auxiliary Air Station and flying a PBM Martin Mariner Seaplane. The base was established during WWII as an operating base for sea planes conducting anti-submarine surveillance off the Atlantic coast.
But sadly, the newlyweds would have only seven months together before tragedy struck. On September 24, 1943, Bill and five of his crewmen were flying their aircraft on a night mission when they attempted to land at NAAS Harvey Point on the Perquimans River during a storm. For whatever reason they crashed and all aboard were killed thus becoming the squadrons first operational loss. However, their remains were recovered, and Bill was buried in the Greenlawn Memorial Park, Columbia, Richland County, South Carolina. Afterwards, Carmen would remarry in 1945 to Navy Lt. Edward Francis Gallagher (1918-2004), an Annapolis graduate of 1942. He was a flight student at Whiting Field in 1945 and would retire a Navy Captain. Both Carmen and Edward are buried in the Paso Robles District Cemetery, Paso Robles, San Luis Obispo County, California.
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