Lillian Allen Walker

Born: October 2, 1913, near Carrier Mills, Illinois

Death: January 4, 2012

Education: Carrier Mills High School, 1934; correspondence courses in nursing; courses in accounting, bookkeeping, shorthand and typing at Olympic College, Bremerton, Washington

Professional career: nurse and surgical assistant, Lewis Home Sanitorium, Harrisburg, Ill., 1935-37; private family nurse and domestic, Oak Park and Chicago, Illinois, 1937-1940; custodian, Puget Sound Navy Yard, Bremerton, 1941; postmaster, Sinclair Park, Bremerton, 1944; homemaker and mother, 1943-; concurrently, bookkeeper, accountant, office assistant, custodian, community activist.

Married: May 20, 1941, James T. Walker, in Seattle (until his death in 2000); two children: James T. Walker Jr., born 1945; June Marie (Newman), born 1950; six grandchildren, three great-grandchildren.

Notably: Charter member, 1943, Bremerton Branch NAACP, and state NAACP secretary, 1940s; charter member, 1948, YWCA of Kitsap County; member and board chairman Kitsap County Regional Library Board, 1972-79.

Other activities: Member since 1941, Ebenezer African Methodist Episcopal Church, Bremerton, serving as trustee, steward, Sunday School secretary, president of the Missionary Society; founder and former president Church Women United, Bremerton; treasurer, Bremerton Garden Club; active in Kitsap County Democratic Party since 1940s, serving as precinct committeewoman in 1970s; charter board member of Carver Civic Club, founded 1948 as Bremerton affiliate of National Association of Colored Women's Clubs; PTA member since 1945; two terms on the Area Agency on Aging.

Awards: Lillian and James Walker named "MLK Citizens of the Century" by Kitsap County's Martin Luther King Memorial Scholarship Fund Committee, 1997; Bremerton PTA Golden Acorn Award; Kitsap County Democrats' Lifetime Achievement Award, 2006; YWCA Founders' Award; Liberty Bell Award, Kitsap County Bar Association, 2009.

The Mary Church Terrell Lifetime Achievement Award, National Association of Colored Women's Clubs, 2009