Margaret Hildebrandt Walker

AIKEN, SC - Margaret Hildebrandt Walker (Avey) was a Midwesterner by birth, and a New Englander by choice.  Peg ended her journey in Aiken, South Carolina, where she moved from Maine in 2012 to be near her youngest daughter, Carol Goff.  She was a woman of strong opinions, kind intentions, and a clear mind into her 96th year.

     Born in Columbus, Ohio, on December 21, 1922, Peg was the only child of Albert Edwin Avey and Naomi May Avey (Hildebrandt).  Her father was a professor of philosophy at Ohio State University.  Her mother, the daughter of farmers, was a college graduate whose life was shortened by the lingering effects of childhood rheumatic fever.  Peg was close to her father, a quiet, scholarly man who cared devotedly for his wife until her death in 1935, and for his daughter throughout her childhood and college years.  Losing her mother at age 13 was hard for Peg, although with her customary frankness she said it was also a relief, as she had grown up anticipating her mother’s death.

     Three years later, Albert remarried, to Anna Benade Cornuelle, a widow with three daughters.  At sixteen Peg was challenged by the sudden addition of three sisters, but over time became close to her wise and kind stepmother.  Her stepmother’s family had spent some years in India, where they worked as Baptist missionaries until her first husband’s death.   Peg’s visits home from college were often to a house filled with homesick Indian college students, welcomed and cooked for by her stepmother and father.

     The seeds of Peg’s lifelong adventurousness were planted by her family’s early travels to Cincinnati to visit relatives, to Florida for her mother’s health (in their Model A Ford), and to Europe for her 6^th grade year.  When the family returned to Columbus Peg attended high school at OSU’s progressive University School, sponsored by the University’s Department of Education.  The creative atmosphere of University School helped inspire Peg’s later teaching career.  After her high school graduation she left home for college at Denison University in Granville, Ohio, where she made lifelong friends. 

     After college, Peg worked with the families of enlisted personnel on the Manhattan Project in Los Alamos, New Mexico, during World War II.  Returning to Columbus, she married Harvey Walker, Jr. in September 1945.  Harvey finished his PhD in Chemistry and Peg completed a Master’s Degree in Psychology at Ohio State University.   Then they moved to St. Louis, Missouri, where Peg taught psychology to nursing students while Harvey went to medical school.  They raised five children, two sons and three daughters, in the 1950s and 1960s.  During these years Peg gave countless volunteer hours to the Unitarian Church, school PTAs, Girl Scouts, and taught cultural enrichment classes to children in the St. Louis Public Schools in the Springboard to Learning Program.  

     Ever the pioneers, Peg and Harvey divorced in 1970, and Peg returned to work full-time.  1971 to 1988 were challenging, but meaningful years for her.  While teaching in a home for teenaged girls referred by the juvenile courts, she returned to graduate school to get her Special Education teaching certification.  Peg then taught in a school for children with learning disabilities and later in a St. Louis public high school, an experience she found profoundly rewarding.  Her passion for social justice was fueled by the Civil Rights movement and her firsthand experience of minority struggles for equality in St. Louis.

     Upon her retirement in 1988, Peg sold her house in St. Louis and moved to Sullivan, Maine, where she spent the happiest years of her life.  For 20 years she had been a summer visitor to Downeast Maine, invited initially by a college classmate.  Her children were grown and dispersed around the country and she was eager to move to a place of her own choosing.  She found a spiritual home in the New England country towns among the reserved, but welcoming, Mainers.  Peg bought a hundred-fifty-year-old farmhouse, hired workers from the community to help her repair it, got involved as a volunteer, and made new friends.  At the age of 75 she was elected to the Mountain View School Board, where she served for twelve years.  Other civic involvements included the Frenchmans Bay Library Board, the Sullivan-Sorrento Historical Society, the WHCA Loan Fund Committee, the Unitarian Universalist Church of Ellsworth, and local fundraisers and festivals.  Peg loved the Schoodic Peninsula of Acadia National Park and the Schoodic International Sculpture Symposium.   Every summer she attended concerts at the Pierre Monteux School of Conducting in nearby Hancock, Maine.

     Peg had a beloved “double first cousin,” Jim Hildebrandt, also born in 1922, to Peg’s mother’s brother and her father’s sister.  They lived 100 miles apart while growing up in Columbus and Cincinnati.  In the 1990s they found themselves reunited, again 100 miles apart, in the state of Maine.  Although distant in politics, they maintained a strong bond of affection throughout their near-century.  Jim died in 2017.

Peg is survived by four of her five children.  Son David Edwin Walker died in 2006, leaving six children.   Son Steven Campbell Walker lives in Sacramento, California, and has three children.  Daughter Anne Elizabeth Walker lives in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, and has two sons and a step-daughter.  Daughter Ellen Lois Walker lives in Athens, Georgia, and has three sons.  Daughter Carol Naomi Goff lives in Aiken, South Carolina, and has one daughter.  Peg’s sixteen grandchildren and six great-grandchildren have scattered creatively over the globe and provided their grandma with vicarious adventures.  Peg loved each of her cats in turn, Cassie, Cotton Candy, Chato, Callie, and Silky.  She worked tirelessly on behalf of learners of all ages.  She visited all of the U.S. States except Hawaii, and traveled to Europe, Panama, and Australia. 

     Services will be private, at the convenience of the family.  Memories may be shared at shellhouseriversfuneralhome.com.  Contributions in honor of Peg’s memory may be made to the educational organization closest to your heart.

SHELLHOUSE – RIVERS FUNERAL HOME, 715 EAST PINE LOG RD., AIKEN, SC