Art Bradley introduced Charlie Walker, and welcomed him back into the
Rotary Club of McMinnville . Charlie is a past-president of Linfield
College and a former member of the McMinnville Rotary.
Art expressed his appreciation for this opportunity
as it was fifteen years ago that Charlie had inducted
Art into the club.
Following the induction,
Bruce Huffman interviewed Charlie, and the following is a transcript of that
interview.
Q: When and where did
you first become a Rotarian?
Charlie: I became a Rotarian
at the very end of the 1960’s in Troy, New York, and was a
Rotarian there until I moved to McMinnville in 1975 and joined
here.
Q: What is something
that you remember when you were President of the Rotary Club
of McMinnville?
Charlie: I remember that it
was the 75th anniversary of the club, but I honestly
don’t remember a lot about the year I was President. I remember
much more about the year I was Vice President, because in those
days the Vice President was in charge of the program, and the
social events of the club. On one occasion, as a couple of you
may remember, we boarded a Greyhound bus, filled every seat,
went up to Portland and had breakfast in a railcar dining room
on the eastside. Then we boarded a train, went to Hood River
and had brunch at the Columbia Gorge Hotel. Then we got on a
boat, came down the river back to Portland where the bus met us
and brought us back to McMinnville. For me, those kinds of
events were a lot of fun.
Q: How many days did
that take?
Charlie: One.
Q: What would you say
you are known for?
Charlie: I guess I’m known
for being a former President of Linfield. Older people in the
room certainly remember me as the guy who was always asking for
money for the college. One of the things that I felt
uncomfortable about was that everyone would introduce me by my
name, and then would say “President of Linfield College”. I
felt that was a barrier. I just wished that they would
introduce me as Charlie Walker. But today, everyone just
introduces me as Charlie Walker.
Q: Do you have a hidden
talent?
Charlie: Well, I grew up in
western Pennsylvania, in a very small town of 800 people, and
the favorite thing to do every Saturday night was to go to a
polka party. And at every polka party, we would end the evening
by dancing the Pennsylvania Polka. I can say that I can dance a
pretty good polka.
Q: Do you have a
favorite quote?
Charlie: I really don’t have
a favorite quote, but my wife was reading a mystery book
recently, and she copied down a quote from the book and put it
on my desk. I would say that, at the moment, it is a quote that
is very meaningful for me. It was written by a haiku poet in
the mid-1600’s, and the quote in translation is “an idea turns
to dust or magic depending on the talent that rubs against it”.
Q: Can you recall an
embarrassing moment in Rotary?
Charlie: No question. Some
of you remember Pete Whittlesey, some of you remember Chuck
Colvin. When I was Vice President, we had a food fair. We had
a superb turnout…it was great, but we had a lot of Steinfeld
pickles and a lot of other things made in Oregon leftover, so at
every meeting afterwards we would have an auction, and I was the
auctioneer. My dependable bidders were Chuck Colvin and
Whittlesey, and they got a little tired of that after awhile, and
so one day they came to the meeting, and they had a crate.
There was plenty of room in the crate for the occupant to
breathe. At the end of the evening they came up to me an
implored me to end the auctions, and they said “and to that end
we want to give you something new to do, and so we would like to
present you with this piglet”, and they came up and presented me
with the crate containing the little pig. As I stood there
holding the pig, I didn’t know whether to be angry, or to try
and say something to brush it off. The truth is I was simply
speechless. I carried that piglet back to the campus and, bless
him, I got a call within an hour from a Rotarian who asked
“would you like to get rid of that pig?” I immediately said
“yes”, and Ezra Koch came and picked up that piglet.
Q: Okay, last
question. What’s the best advice you ever received?
Charlie: It’s hard when
you’re as old as I am, and gotten advice for as many years as
I’ve gotten advice. It’s hard to single out an individual piece
of advice. But over 50 years ago, when I was a first-year
teacher at a public school in Pennsylvania, the Principal gave
me some advice that I’ve used very frequently. The advice was
“remember that there is always more than one way to do
anything”.
Jill Methven