Last in three-part series.
WHENEVER Jimmy Walker was asked where he was from, he loved saying, “I’m twice, Virginia. I was born in (Amherst) Virginia and I come from a great woman named Virginia.”
Her son inherited that greatness and passed it down to a son named Jalen, whom he abandoned soon after conception – a habitual failing – in the midst of an unsatisfactory nine-year NBA career.
By all written accounts and eyewitness descriptions of Walker’s game, his 16.7-point scoring average fell far short of the celestial competence that persuaded the Pistons to select the 6-foot-3 guard No. 1 in the 1967 draft, ahead of Earl Monroe, Clem Haskins, Sonny Dove and Walt Frazier.
Michael Fahey played at Brown the same years Walker was at Providence and remains star-struck by the 6-3 guard’s between-the-legs change-of-direction, offensive arsenal and “terrifying” power pirouette, the first he had seen.
“Monroe’s spin covered an astounding distance east to west,” Fahey said. “Walker’s spin was tighter, more north-south.”
As if that wasn’t enough to genuflect to, Walker flaunted an unflinching demeanor. Andy Carra covered St. Bonaventure sports for the student newspaper and still marvels at a sequence observed against Canisius.
“Walker calmly dribbled up court while talking and listening to Joe Mullaney. Two Griffs were trying to take the ball from him, and he carried on a conversation with the coach as if no one was near him!”
Flora Davis, a Kansas City bank teller at Columbia National Union when she met Walker, was one of the few who got close. They began dating after her husband died nearly 20 years ago, yet never lived together.
“If you were a person he loved, there was nothing too good for you from him. Everywhere I look in my home I see something he bought for me or my family. He came bearing gifts,” she said by phone. “But if he didn’t trust you, you were on the other side of that.”
By Flora’s count, Walker fathered eight children “that we knew of.” Two girls live in Kansas City.
“Except for Jalen, he never would admit they were his,” Flora said. “He’d say, ‘People are just trying to get next to me.’ There was no DNA taken. They all say they’re his.”
About 10 years ago, I interviewed Walker for an NBC feature on the non-relationship between father and son. He confided he had just been diagnosed with lymphoma. I notified Jalen and passed along his father’s number in case he wanted to reach out. They never connected.
“It was the weirdest thing,” Flora said. “Jalen would call occasionally but Jimmy wouldn’t be here. It was almost mystical. I can’t explain it. Maybe it wasn’t meant to be.”
Pre-cancer, Walker negotiated fairly evenly with life after basketball. His passions turned to swimming and tennis; he became an accomplished singles player. For years, he had a job in the KC-Missouri school district as an instructor and had his own summer camp. There’s talk about naming a court after him.
Once the disease began to disperse throughout his body, Walker worked at a warehouse whenever he had some quality time and lived at the City Mission.
“Jimmy was a person who didn’t let you know something was bothering him,” Flora related. “He developed a tumor on his neck in ’06. ‘As soon as they cut this out, I’ll be straight.’ he’d say. He kept hoping the cancer would disappear.”
Instead it went into his lungs. Walker was put in a nursing home. On Jan. 30, Flora called the Suns office and left a message for Jalen; it was his 34th birthday. He returned the call promptly and gave Flora his private cell number. She was on her way to see Walker, said she would call as soon as she got there. All they got was Jalen’s message recording.
A few months later, Walker had to be hospitalized. Dave Bing, Sam Lacey and a couple other ex-teammates visited. Naja, one of Jimmy’s not-for-attribution daughters, lovingly cared for him. It was clear the end was near. Flora asked Desire Toliver to call Jalen.
“You need to come and see him, he’s very sick” she informed her half-brother. His response: “I want to sit down and talk to my father.”
Walker was happy when he heard Jalen’s message.
“He knew he was dying,” Flora said. “He was holding onto the hope he’d get to see him.
Jalen promised to come to Kansas City in the summer, “and he did come,” Flora said, “to his father’s funeral.”
Walker, 63, died July 2. Desire took some of her father’s ashes back with her to Amherst, where she lives and works in a nursing home and was raised by a great woman named Virginia.
Memories last forever & an O’Day
JOE O’Day approached each writing assignment as if it were the Super Bowl, seventh game of the World Series, or NBA Finals, Bob Decker says admiringly.
For 15 years, from the mid-’70s to the late ’80s, Decker read copy on the seventh-floor rim of the Daily News sports department; O’Day, who joined the paper in 1948, was a favorite.
His Sept. 11 death at 84 triggered a “binge” of stories about the 5-foot-8 World War II tough guy whose style was legendary within the business – a past-closing-time stagger from a pub named Louie’s East (nearby the newsroom and his apartment), a sneer that meant trouble lay ahead, and a spit-eating Irish grin.
“Joe would bust my chops for staying late when his shift was finished, reminding me I was loosing valuable drinking time,” Decker says. “I’d tell him I was waiting for the West Coast games and his retort was always, ‘We had our West Coast games in by 11 when I worked inside.’ I had to remind him, in those days, the ‘West Coast’ was Chicago.”
I’ve always felt if my editor wants to get rid of me all he has to do is assign me to write hockey. O’Day didn’t mind covering any sport, from one day to the next, and did it insightfully. For many years he was the designated Dog Show critic.
“Joe knew nobody else wanted to cover it, but he treated it as if it was going to be the lead story of the section,” Decker says. “He was all business while he was covering an event and all business when he came back into the office to write his story. He would turn in his piece and then say to me: ‘That’s the kind of spit they want, right, Deck?’
A solid reporter, who spent more time trying to get it right than coming up with fancy phrases or clever lines. O’Day’s “clever lines” came later at Louie’s, where he would tell tales of the good old days, when baseball had 16 teams, the NHL had six and the NBA eight.
O’Day’s dream beat was the Knicks of the late ’60s and early ’70s … their holy days when the franchise twice achieved championship immortality and Hall of Fame reputations were launched by six players, a head coach and substitute who listened vigilantly to what Red Holzman preached and practiced.
O’Day didn’t author all that many feted one-liners but loved the sound of the wise crack. In Bill Bradley’s rookie year long before team charters, the Knicks were on a trip and were about to fly Mohawk Airlines.
Bradley asked Joe if Mohawk was a good airline, recalled Paul Kaplun, O’Day’s cousin. “Yeah, it’s so good they sell passengers chances instead of tickets.”
His side-mouth delivery was guaranteed to evoke a chuckle or a rise. His gift was appraising a player concisely. O’Day once described Phil Jackson, the above-mentioned sub, as being “awkwardly effective.”
We all have our pet O’Day drinking story. This one-day he came back into the office late on a winter afternoon after he attended a press conference as an invited guest on his own time. He had a drink or three at the affair and sat down at his desk to “rest his eyes” a bit before walking out the back to his apartment.
Decker picks up from there: “One of Joe’s cronies, who was supposed to work that night, called to tell us he wasn’t going to make it into work that night because he had slipped on the ice on his way out of his house and turned his ankle.
“When the message was relayed to the guy running the slot that night, Joe heard it, lifted up his head and harrumphed: ‘Call the (bleep) back and ask him how he got his (bleepin’) foot in the glass!’
” … and then Joe put his head back down.”