Clarion-Ledger - Jackson, Mississippi - Thu, May 1, 1969
KIRBY WALKER CONCLUDING LONG CAREER
By BILLY SKELTON Clarion-Ledger Staff Writer
"This is Kirby Walker. May I help you?" The voice was businesslike but friendly as the genial superintendent of the Jackson City Schools answered the telephone in his offce at the school headquarters at 662 S President Street. He listened for a moment and said, "Well, I'll try. What's on your heart, old fellow."
Kirby Pipkin Walker talks to many, many people, but he also listens a lot. Superintendent of Mississippi-pi's largest school system which is about three times larger in enrollment than the next largest system for 33 years, Walker will retire July 1.
What are his plans? "None. None. Absolutely none," he answers. "Nobody's come rushing to me offering me a job, and it won't take me long to catch up on fishing, hunting, checkers, and chess." The response invites skepticism. But the superintendent who has planned so well for his school district insists he has no plans for his retirement except to stay in Jackson "where I know my friends and my credit's established." School He reckons he'll have to find to something, though.
"My wife can't stand three times as much husband and one-third as much income."
NO BOOK
One thing he will not do is to write a book. He has no great observations to pass on, he argues.
However, from 1954 to 1964, Supt. Walker did keep a log on school desegregation. He won't discuss it, however, except to say he'll turn it over to the school board for whatever use it may be to them. School board records fascinate Walker. He said the Jackson school district has its minutes ever since it became operative in 1888 as now constituted and adds that "I've read every blessed entry."
Although" Walker deals .with, school work on an executive level, he asserts that what happens "in the classroom between teacher and pupil" is what is important.
"As long as you can keep that relationship good, then you'll have a good educational system," he said.
OPEN DOOR
The door to Walker's office is always open, and likely as not he'll answer the telephone if 'someone calls his office. A recent interview was interrupted by the arrival of a woman who poured out her troubles to the administrator in an adjoining office. Walker listened, counseled, and once came back to his desk for some Kleenex for the tearful patron. The superintendent's resourcefulness is illustrated by one technique that has pulled him through more than one tough session in his office.
When confronted by a group that wants him to do something which he in good conscience cannot do, he listns respectfully, then reaches into his desk, removes a rod of reinforcing steel, slips it down his back and says, "no."
"Sometimes it works," he 'says.
DIRECT APPROACH
Dr. Walker says he tries to meet things head on and to be as objective as it is humanly possible to be. "I've found people generally willing to listen to fact and logic. I think folks have to be heard. You may not be able to resolve their concerns, but you lhave to share them," he comments.
One might wonder how the superintendent of a school system with 41,000 students escapes from the pressures of the job. Well, says Dr. Walker, if you're tired, you don't have much trouble relaxing.
He does get away for a fishing or hunting trip now and then but he's the type of man who can get a lot of "mileage" out of a few outings. He also plays an occasional game of Bridge "for my amusement and my partner's amazement."
If Walker sincerely has no plans for the future, "he has a big job of planning ahead for the has many hours to fill. ''During his school years, he has started work about 7 a.m, then met evening commitments on school business for two of three nights a week. The other nights he has spent reading and writing reports to the board, school memoranda or talks he was to give before various groups.
"COUNTRY BOY"
Dr. Walker he received an honorary doctorate in education from Southwestern University in Memphis in 1953 like to call himself a country boy, although he was graduated from Hattiesburg High School in 1918.
Born in Dunn, N. C. 68 years ago this coming June , he began school at Magee in 1906 and moved to Hattiesburg the next year.
"I've been in school the last 63 years," he observes. His father's people were from , Miles Creek in Simpson County) and his mother's people, the Pipkins ("mean little earthen pot," he explains) were North Carolinians.
He was graduated from Southwestern in 1922 and was married in 1925. Dr. and Mrs. Walker have a son, Dr. Kirby Walker Jr., a Jackson dentist, and two grandsons.
The schoolman began his career as a teacher at Forrest County Agricultural High School of . Brooklyn, and three years later was named superintendent, a post he held for seven years.
IN CITY 36 YEARS
He served as supervisor of agricultural high schools and junior colleges for the Mississippi State Department of Education for two years, and took a year out to obtain his master's degree at the University of Chicago.
He joined the Jackson Schools in 1953 as assistant to the superintendent, a year later was named acting superintendent and another year later superintendent.
A man who looks somewhat taller than his 6 feet, one and a half inches and considerably younger than he is, the neatly dressed Dr. Walker is characterized by not only an efficient manner but by efficiency in his work.
A principal who has worked with him commented on the superintendent's "comprehensive knowledge and attention to detail." "No one can come anywhere near as close," he said. "It's a mystery to me how he does it all."
PUPILS FIRST
But the thing that impresses the principal most is Dr. Walker's insistence that the interest of the pupils in the schools always come first. Mrs. Howard Nichols, a member of the school board, sees Dr. Walker as an administrator, teacher, businessman, philosopher, and humorist. She thinks he is "very warm and enthusiastic personality" has contributed greatly to his skill in the art of human relations.
Board members feel, she said, that Dr. Walker "has given us his all."
"It's been such a pleasure to work with him. His keen sense of humor has helped so many of us at so many times. It has been a privilege to see him work," she said. One associate declared he was "one of this age's exceptional men."
47-YEAR CAREER
Now in his fifth decade of teaching, Walker has shepherded schools through the Depression. World War II shortages, building programs and integration crises.
As he steps down, Dr. Walker sees the 70s as no period for the faint hearted in school administration. The superintendent of the future must be an innovator, an expert in planning and budgeting, a mediator, a negotiator and a skilled "political economist" a respectable euphimism for a lobbyist," he says. Looking back, he reports that "every year has been exciting, filled with an abundance of activity."
The years ahead appear no less exciting to Walker.
