Katherine Fay “Katie” Walker 1896 - 1998

WALKER

Posted By: Connie Swearingen- Volunteer (email)
Date: 2/2/2017 at 10:09:19

Sioux City Journal
31 March 1998

Katherine Fay “Katie” Walker, 87, of the Oak Grove/Milwaukie area of Oregon, formerly of Sioux City, died Friday, March 20, 1998 in Oregon.

No services were held. Peake Memorial Chapel of Milwaukie, Ore., was in charge of the arrangements.

Miss Walker was born December 29, 1911, in Norfolk, Nebraska. She moved with her family to Sioux City when she was a child. She graduated from Central High School.

She was a secretary for First Congregational Church in Sioux City, then worked for the Sioux City Gas and Electric/Iowa Public Service Companies, where she set up a mimeograph department. While there, she designed a mimeograph equipment board in the early 1940s and had it patented. She sold the patent to A.B. Dick Company in Chicago.

She directed community singing during the war years and directed at the Sioux City Air Base USO in Sergeant Bluff and the Band Shell in Grandview Park during the summer of 1944. She also sang with the Abu Bekr Shrine Chanters for many years.

In 1945, she moved to San Francisco, California where she worked for the California State Chamber of Commerce and later co-owned Keenan-Walker Advertising Service. She also directed community singing for many organizations.

She moved to Portland, Oregon in 1950 and worked for the Oregon State Health Division for 23 years in the office of the State Health Officer and was secretary of the Oregon State Board of Podiatry Examiners.

She has been a resident of the Oak Grove/Milwaukie area for 47 years.

She was a former member of the first Brownie pack in Sioux City and was active in Girl Scouts throughout her high school days, helping to establish “Camp O’ the Hills” the first Girl Scout Camp in Stone Park.

Survivors include a sister, Ruth Brown of Overland Park, Kansas; five nieces, Katie McNaughton, Barbara Giordano, Beckie Brown, Mary Ellen LeGay and Molly Brown, and three nephews, Bernard, Phillip and Charles Brown.