George B. Walton
George B. Walton, 81, left his Highlands home, his “wonderful wife” and his “wonderful dog” Thursday, November 17, 2022.He was a lifelong resident of Louisville, a lawyer, an HYR coach, a mental health advocate, a YMCA lap swimmer and a U of L sports fan. He was a very good husband, dad and grandfather.
In their reports George’s elementary teachers uniformly agreed, “George is capable of doing better.” He was placed in the “slow” reading group. George was undeterred by his teachers’ evaluation of his English proficiency. He is the author of several books. Despite a bargain price of 5 cents a copy, sales of his debut work, Adventures of Timmie the Mild Mannered Dog of the Waltons, were mildly disappointing. His elementary school compatriots were apparently more impressed with the 2nd and 3rd books in the Timmie trilogy, as sales reportedly increased substantially. His literary oeuvre consists of an unpublished autobiography, a grand treatise on the proper role and function of world government, and a play that received many warm rejections from Broadway agents and producers.
George dropped out, was expelled, and occasionally even graduated from some of the country’s most prestigious academic institutions. In high school, he was shipped to Massachusetts as his parents struggled with marital difficulties. George’s time at Phillips Andover Academy was no more successful than his parents’ marriage. After two years of epic fist fights, chalk throwing teachers, marginal grades, and most unforgivably to George, an utter lack of female students, George refused to return to the school. His father would not allow him to return to Waggener, which allowed girls but according to his father, had inferior academics. They compromised and George spent his final year of high school at Kentucky Country Day.
George attended Yale University, which had some interesting professors and some attractions but also suffered from some of the same shortcomings as Andover. Most unforgivably – a lack of girls. George was soon on super secret double probation for various indiscretions with alcohol, mediocre grades, and perhaps firearms. Intent on making Yale a more inclusive and family friendly institution, George moved his girlfriend and her 3 year-old child into his dorm room. The powers that be were unimpressed and promptly expelled the sophomore.
Not much is known about the years that followed, it was the ’60s after all. What is known is his girlfriend supported the makeshift family on money earned waitressing, while George attempted to write the great American play. They lived in New York and later Chicago. As the war in Vietnam heated up, George joined the reserves to avoid the draft. His vagabond family did not survive his army absence and George returned to Louisville after basic training. He enrolled at U of L. After a semester at U of L he somehow convinced Yale he was now prepared to abide by their standards of comportment and was allowed to return to complete his undergraduate degree.
After graduating from Yale, a regrettable dalliance with the Grand Old Party led to the production of a few incriminating photos of the young George rubbing elbows with the likes of Gerald Ford and Nelson Rockefeller. Despite these questionable associations, he held a firm commitment to civil rights. While in law school he helped bring Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. to speak and gave the introductory remarks. He claimed the great orator complimented his introductory remarks afterwards.
In Forrest Gump-like fashion, shortly after meeting with Dr. King, he was off to Chicago to protest at the 1968 Democratic National Convention. The version of this story initially recounted to his children made them think the history books were in error and it was George Walton, not Bobby Seale, who was the 8th member of the Chicago Seven. Alas, in later years, when pressed, George revealed that the extent of the mayhem he caused was walking through a police line in an attempt to escape tear gas. His abandonment of his fellow protestors’ suffering resulted in arrest and a grand old time in the safety of the Cook County Jail. The disorderly conduct charge later plea bargained down to jaywalking.
After his short stay at the Cook County Jail, George returned to Louisville where he found work with the Kentucky Commission on Human Rights and found love with a “Voluptuous Babylonian Princess.” At the Human Rights commission George spearheaded the commission’s efforts to end segregation and provide fair housing. These efforts attracted the attention of a Peace Corps’ volunteer recently returned from Guyana, who was working on open housing initiatives. Voluptuous Babylonian Princesses who fought for civil rights apparently being in short supply, George was undeterred by her current marital status. Soon they were organizing hunger strikes together in support of the black U of L students agitating for the establishment of an African American Studies Department and living together in Old Louisville. A day after her divorce came through they married in Cherokee Park in a ceremony attended by his parents, her uncle, and the “man who walked through.”
After marrying the Voluptuous Babylonian Princess, George returned to law school. (Did I mention at some point along the way he started but dropped out of law school? Are you really surprised at this point?) George graduated from law school and shortly thereafter he and his VBP welcomed their first child, Sarah. By all objective standards, things were going pretty well at this juncture for the young lawyer, father, and husband but, in the words of his autobiography, “doom loomed large on the horizon.”
George suffered a psychotic break in 1971 that perhaps put some of his youthful exploits in context. It began with delusions of his law partners engaging in a mafia plot against him and ended rambling to a group of young men and women in a stranger’s apartment he had broken into in Crescent Hill. The young woman who lived in the apartment’s father happened to be a very nice police officer. He determined that George needed to go to the hospital and not to jail. The next six months were spent in psychological hell. Therapy, both traditional and shock, did not restore him to anything resembling normalcy. After six months his doctors said he could no longer be cared for in Louisville and would need to be shipped to one of several specialized psychiatric facilities, all of which were thousands of miles from his wife and infant daughter. His VBP would not agree and brought in a new doctor. The new doctor said there was a new drug called Lithium that had just been approved by the FDA and it was possible it would help. Within days of taking the drug for the first time George was better. Within two weeks he was out of the hospital, back home with his family, and looking for a job.
Lithium and other psychiatric drugs gave George the opportunity to resume a good, meaningful, and productive life as a lawyer, father, and husband. Manic Depression/Bi-polar disorder was a huge part of his life. In the decades that followed his diagnosis, he became an example of what good psychiatric care and support can enable. He would serve as an officer in the Louisville Manic Depressive Association and President of the Kentucky Mental Health Association, Kentucky’s oldest advocacy group for issues related to mental health.
George practiced law for over forty years. He was a “general practice” attorney and the “go-to” advisor for generations of Louisville families.
George was a warm and loving father. He particularly treasured his role as an HYR coach in the 70s & 80s. Youth sports framed his best memories of his own childhood and he was a very good athlete. As a soccer, basketball, and baseball coach in HYR his enthusiasm was unmatched. He somehow pulled off the trick of being incredibly enthusiastic and caring immensely about strategy and outcomes without ever hinting at being one of the competitive asshole jerk coaches that were unwelcome in the warm non-competitive neighborhood sports program. In more recent years he could be spotted on the fields of Atherton at his grandchildren’s soccer games sporting his green ‘83 HYR coach’s jacket which had been carefully preserved. To his last month, he would happily give a season overview and play by play of all the incredible victories of the dozen or so teams he coached, turning each kid on the team into an epic character of the Bad News Bears variety.
George was a member of the Solidarity Sunday school class at Crescent Hill Baptist Church. He was quick to point out that these weren’t the “no smoking, no drinking, no pre-marital sex Baptists, slightly to the right of Attilla the Hun.” Instead, it was a group of smart, politically liberal friends who enjoyed getting together once a week to wrestle with big political and existential questions.
George is survived by his sister, Malcolm Kelly, who never dropped him. She didn’t drop him when she dangled the obnoxious little brother by his ankles over the second story banister for various offenses. She didn’t drop him when the three-year-old George fell over a hundred foot cliff and tangled his limbs in the tree just over the lip and she reached down and pulled him up. She didn’t drop him during his various mental health hospitalizations when she and her husband were at times allowed to secret him out and take him to his beloved U of L basketball games at Freedom Hall.
George is survived by his granddaughter Isa who promises to overfeed “wonderful dog” and give her plenty of pets.
George is survived by his grandson Eli who loved hearing these stories for the 10th time and considers himself a great appreciator of the George Walton mythos. He will miss the dramatic flair of the author.
George is survived by his grandson Satchel who doesn’t care a lick that he didn’t get into Yale and hopes that his grandfather has finally stopped thinking that it is his fault.
George is survived by his grandson Cooper who swears to have retired from musical theater and assures him he will not miss any performances.
George is survived by his daughter Sarah who will do her best on the whole back scratching thing in his absence (see below).
George is survived by his son Ted who loves him dearly but is tired of writing.
And George is survived by Jo Carol, who he says “is not quite so much of a Babylonian Princess now but some slight lessening of her youthful voluptuousness has in no way reduced my feelings of love and affection for her. She is the only person I want to spend most of my time with. I always want to be with Jo Carol in the morning over coffee and newspapers. And I want to be with her in the evening with good wine, good beer and food prepared by her. She likes to have her back scratched and feet rubbed. I usually accommodate her in these things.”
He was a good man and a lovable character.
Jo Carol Williams Walton
Jo Carol Williams Walton, 78, died Wednesday December 28, 2022. Her Dupont Manual high school yearbook ambition was to always be happy. She achieved that goal far more frequently than most of us. She knew what was important to her and was practiced in the art of relishing. She relished books and authors (frequently talking of them as if they were old friends), music (would put a new favorite song on repeat for days), movies (she saw Tender Mercies seven times at the Village 8 on dollar days), yardsale acquisitions that packed her beautiful eclectic Highland’s home, and, most of all, the people she loved. She was a lifelong resident of Louisville. A Peace Corp volunteer. A member of the Solidarity Sunday school class at Crescent Hill Baptist Church. She was a warm, smart, loving person, who connected with people. She fostered a sense of place, purpose, and safety in her family and friends. She pulled the strings that made her family and community into good places. Preceded in death by her husband of 53 years, George Walton, passed away last month. In bed the morning she passed, she was talking to him. She will be greatly missed by her children (Sarah and Ted), grandchildren (Isa, Eli, Satchel & Cooper) and many friends and extended family members.