An unremembered memorial to a would-be hero
by Jack Neely
Randolph Street is just a couple of blocks crossing Magnolia in the northeast corner of downtown. It used to be part of Florida Street, which is still called Florida Street south of Depot. About 100 years ago, Florida Street got that reputation for prostitutes. It was, for a time, Knoxville's red-light district.
The movie star and opera singer Grace Moore spent several years of her childhood on what's now Randolph Street, when this was the nicer end of Florida Street. The residents of Randolph Street may have had it renamed to pretend it was a different place from Florida Street.
Today, it's not residential anymore. It's not much of anything. To call Randolph Street industrial seems a little bit of an exaggeration.
Littered with cigarette butts and pop cans, the Randolph Street sidewalk goes by a big fenced-in surface parking lot that's empty even in the daytime. Across the street is a windowless all-orange-painted barbecue restaurant called SMOKY'S HEN HOUSE; maybe as a joke on pompous literary folks, the N is defiantly backwards. At lunch time laughing men in overalls walk slowly in and out of the swinging door. They're probably laughing at folks who care about things as silly as the proper orientation of awning N's.
On the sidewalk directly across the street from Smoky's is a big chunk of granite that looks like it's been knocked over. Walking along, you could hop on the chunk of granite and not notice what's inscribed on it. But if you slow down a little and do look, here's what you'll see:
WILLIAM TAYLOR WALKER
1921-1964
HE LIVED HUMBLY, BUT DIED NOBLY.
That's all it says. You'll have to do some digging to find out more about Mr. Walker, how he lived and died. As it happened, the events that resulted in this inscription transpired on a cold Friday morning, 35 years ago this week.
The Tennessee Vols weren't front-page news in 1964. Doug Dickey's boys had had a mediocre season, though some alumni were getting stoked up for the season's final home game tomorrow, against Kentucky. They expected "at least 38,000" fans to attend. The Vols had won the beer keg from Kentucky the year before. To prevent an anticipated theft, UT's Army ROTC had sent a detachment called the UT Rangers to guard the keg 'round the clock. They'd soon have to surrender it.
Knoxville was probably more excited about the prospect of the new interstate, which was slicing through North Knoxville like Sherman through Georgia. A pall of dust lay over the newly demolished buildings. It was an eerie scene that reminded many observers of the aftermath of war.
It had been warm—"balmy," as people always say when it's supposed to be cold—but Friday morning you could see your breath. It was suddenly November, down in the 30s. They were expecting the season's first frost, a late one this year.
That morning William Walker was walking along the ruins of old Hudson Avenue picking up pieces of leftover cardboard and putting them in his pushcart.
In the picture of him that would be in the evening paper, he looks a lot like Woody Guthrie. His short hair shoved back, his long, angular weather-beaten face looking haunted, or maybe appalled. It's a photograph that looks like it was taken just as the subject is dismayed to spot the photographer, a second too late. He was, by various accounts, 39, 40, or 43; in this photograph he looks a solid decade older than any of those guesses.
William Taylor Walker lived in an one-half-address apartment on Maryland Avenue, several blocks away up in Lonsdale. He was a junk man, but not the sort of junk man who had his own store. Then again, he had a place to sleep, so no one could call him a tramp.
Most of what he would have seen on Hudson Avenue that morning were demolished houses. When they finished the interstate, he'd have to come up with a new route. Hudson was, for the time being, still the backside of busy Harrison's Produce, and like most produce loading areas, it was a good place to gather leftover packing materials.
Early that morning, when commuters were still arriving downtown, Walker was walking along Hudson near Luttrell.
A tractor-trailer truck had just parked behind Harrison's. As Walker walked along, collecting cardboard, he noticed something wrong. The truck, without a driver, was rolling slowly forwards.
We don't know why he did what he did next. It wasn't his fault. Most of us would have just watched, and some would even have laughed. But William Taylor Walker, the junk man, left his cart and did all he could to stop that truck.
First he picked up a stray brick, probably a leftover from the demolitions, and heaved it under the tire of the rolling truck. The truck didn't stop, rolled right over the impediment. Walker sprinted along the right side of the cab and tried to run around the front of the truck, apparently to get to the driver's side.
Just before he made it, the runaway truck slammed into the rear of a parked truck. Mr. Walker was right in the middle of the accident he tried to prevent. When they got him free from the wreck, he'd obviously had serious injuries to his head. William Taylor Walker was DOA at UT Hospital.
The News-Sentinel ran his picture with the billowing black flag they always used for traffic fatalities. Walker's surviving family—a brother and a few sisters—held services for him and had him buried in the family plot down in Charleston, Tenn.
Harrison's, which is still nearby, apparently had this memorial erected. It's around the corner from the vanished street where Walker was killed, unread in a typical week, unseen except by the few who find reason to walk here.
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