For good or bad, those “first times” we do many things are etched into our memory bank. I have such a memory.
The first time I was paid for my writing.
It was in the mid-1960’s, the beginning my college career. I knew I wanted to “major in journalism.” To date, I had written for high school newspapers that were printed on those mimeographed purple pages; had studied journalism in only one high school class (the only one that had been available to me); had been a staff member one semester on a real, printed high school newspaper. Now, I was in a college that offered no classes, but did offer a chance for me to write.
Walker Knight was the ahead-of-his-time editor of Home Missions, a Baptist publication about Southern Baptists living, or trying to live, their faith in the place where they lived. Through its pages, Walker also encouraged people to embrace a growing understanding of that faith and to incorporate that understanding into their daily lives. To that cutting-edge magazine, I submitted an unsolicited article on the ministry of Southern Baptists for deaf people.
I received a response, and it was not an insignificant one! Walker sent a note, saying he would probably hold the article and use it as part of a larger one sometime.
He also included a check for $17.50! A huge sum for a wannabe writer in those days. And it was my first time to be paid!
My article never saw publication, as far as I know. I’ve often joked that both steps—paying me but not publishing the article—demonstrated the editor’s insight.
Little did Walker know what his encouragement—symbolized by that hard cold cash—unleashed. I later transferred to a university with a journalism program, and my entire life has been spent putting words on paper. I was going to do that anyway, but Walker’s encouragement made me believe I was on the right path. When I worked for the same denomination a few years later, my encourager became a colleague from whom I learned.
Last December, Walker Knight’s family and friends gathered to say goodbye to his physical presence. As I heard numerous people talk about Walker, I looked at those gathered around nodding and smiling as they remembered him, too. I wondered how many of them had received Walker’s encouragement in some way during their lives and careers. I bet most had. He gave people opportunities. He led people by example and by challenging them to be their best.
The day was not a sad one, but an energizing, reflective one in which we talked about a person of integrity and commitment, words used infrequently in describing people these days. Walker Knight, a human being with all that can mean, chose to live and be a certain way, and he formed his life around those choices to the point that they became his being.
His obituary in The Atlanta Journal-Constitution quoted his family, “Walker Knight was a man who lived his life at the convergence of faith, character and a love of the written word.”
During his memorial service, the words integrity, peacemaker and making things right surfaced continually in the comments. His belief that “peace, like war, must be waged” formed a lengthy poem many speakers referenced. Those words became a mantra for his life.
Walker’s beliefs guided his employment. He pushed boundaries when he discussed civil rights in a magazine whose readers, by and large, would not willingly discuss that subject, lest it make them uncomfortable or requiring them to change. When organizational and directional changes in that job made it impossible for him, he took his being and his words elsewhere so he could be the person he had become. He continued to try to right wrongs by leading his church as it grappled with including all of God’s people inside its walls and heart.
Wherever he lived, whatever job he had, Walker Knight took with him his integrity, peacemaking and zeal to make things right. It wasn’t always easy, safe nor profitable by today’s standards. But he did it.
How fortunate I was to have known him. His memorial service encouraged me to contemplate in more depth what it means to live as a principled person. My unique connection to him is a $17.50 treasure in my memory bank. Walker Knight’s priceless example remains eternal.
To learn more about Walker L. Knight, read his book From Zion to Atlanta: Memoirs.
Photo Credit: Lynn Farmer
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