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- NAVASOTA, TEXAS —
Mr. A. Walker Boyd of Navasota, Texas ended a long and productive life, surrounded by family and friends, at his son’s home in Galveston, Texas on July 1st, 2021. Walker passed away at age 92, survived by his four children Austin W., Tim, Carolyn, and Laxson Boyd, ten grandchildren, eight great grandchildren, and his younger brother Wallis Boyd. He is preceded in death by his wife Jody Calvin Boyd, parents Austin Mac and Cora Boyd, sister Emma Onata Boyd, brothers Nolan, Robert, and Dub Boyd, and his first grandson Austin Robert Boyd. Walker lived life to the fullest, coming into the world six months before the Great Depression at his home in Eureka, Texas, and growing up to seek a career far from the family farm as a chemist with assignments all over the globe.
A 1952 BS graduate of the University of Texas at Austin, Walker headed south to Galveston on the Texas Gulf Coast where he met his future wife, Joanna (Jody) Calvin, and entered the Petro-Chemical industry in Texas City, Texas. A rapid series of promotions led him to leadership positions at Union Carbide in Texas City and in Syracusa, Sicily. He made significant civic contributions to the La Marque, Texas School Board where he was elected President to lead the town’s schools through the racial integration challenges of the late 1960’s. Walker and family embraced farm life in Hurricane, West Virginia upon his promotion to the Union Carbide Business Team in Charleston, and later returned to Texas where he served as the Assistant Plant Manager at his company’s Seadrift, Texas chemical plant. Each move brought a new farm or ranch as he mixed his love of the land with his significant skills in chemical plant management. Walker and family relocated to Sistersville, West Virginia in 1976 where he spent the next 10 years as a plant manager of Union Carbide’s St. Mary’s silicones plant eventually retiring after 37 years. Walker then pursued a wide variety of interests which included ranching and teaching Management at Marietta College, Ohio after which he became the Plant Manager for a chemical company in Moundsville, WVA and his final industry adventure to build and startup an Oxo Plant in Charallave, Venezuela.
In 1993 Walker returned home to Sistersville where he and Jody had created a marvelous cattle ranch on 700 acres of mountain land with a mile of river frontage in Tyler County, West Virginia. His love of the land and industry found a dream mix in his long-term West Virginia home. Never one to rest, Walker often commented that “hard work is the essence of the good life,” so with the chemical industry work now laid aside he focused on raising Angus cattle and the thousands of square bales of hay needed to feed them. Not one to slow down, Walker added real estate to his focus in 1994 with the purchase and renovation of the 100-year-old historic Wells Inn in Sistersville and dozens of other properties in the town, including Jody’s pride and joy—the Townhouse Art Gallery. His love of reading, and passion for collecting books, led to the establishment of a used bookstore and more than 10,000 titles that he collected—and read. Upon Jody’s death, Walker pulled up his West Virginia roots in 2006 and transplanted himself in the west Texas community of Comstock to help his daughter, Dr. Carolyn Boyd, grow the Shumla non-profit enterprise (est. 1998) that has captured the attention of archaeologists around the world with the preservation and documentation of 4,000-year-old Pecos River rock art—the oldest “books” in North America. Walker built more buildings in his life than any of us can count, including homes and art studios and barns and education facilities for Shumla and his many ranches and farms. Armed with his Sawzall, a hammer, and trusty suspenders, he was always at work creating something new.
Walker liked to walk. In 1968 he and Jody launched a family goal to hike the Appalachian Trail, a feat not typical of mid-60’s families. Across the next decade they walked hundreds of miles through the forests of Georgia, North Carolina, Tennessee, and Virginia. For decades that followed, Walker walked five miles a day, even 26 miles one day in his 70’s. Perhaps most notable was his return to the Appalachian Trail with the NWES Hiking Club of Navasota at the age of 87, 88 and 90, where he hiked familiar old trails including the length of the Great Smoky Mountain National Park to far past Hot Springs, North Carolina. Walker never gave up, picking himself up after many falls to press on despite the difficulty of the challenge. That was an important lesson all his children learned from him.
Walker Boyd will be remembered in the coming months at intimate celebrations of his life in Galveston, Tx, at his son’s ranch in Navasota, Tx and later in Comstock, Tx. In lieu of flowers or other gifts, please remember him through a contribution to the Shumla Archaeological Research and Education Center that he worked so tirelessly to build with his daughter (www.shumla.org). Long after Walker is forgotten, the work he did to help preserve the millennia-old written history of Texas’ first people will stand as a testament to “hard work... and the essence of the good life.”
The Daily News, Galveston, TX, 29 July, 2021 (on-line-https://www.galvnews.com/obituaries/article_8ef7823d-7e9c-5772-8083-6bb1fd08c5d3.html) [5]
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1929 - 2021 (92 years)
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