Northern Wyoming News - Serving the Big Horn Basin for over 100 years

WORLAND - Lenora Walker was born Aug. 15, 1927, in Maysville, Oklahoma, to Leroy and Johnny-Belle Smith. She is one of eight children and had three sisters and four brothers, with two of her siblings still alive.

"There are three of us left," Lenora Walker said. She added that she attributes her longevity to good clean living. "I never smoked and I never drank. My mom lived to be 108 and she never smoked or drank either," she said.

Walker met her husband Perry, who was originally from Arkansas, while he was on leave from the service, when he visited relatives who lived right across from her. "He had a cousin that lived across the road from us in Oklahoma. They had teenage girls that we were with all the time and they got us together," she said.

After dating for about two years the couple married and moved to Emblem in 1951. Around 1956 they moved to Worland. "My husband worked out here before we married and liked it so well he wanted to come back here," Walker said.

Walker and her husband had four children: Linda Farris who resides with Walker as her caregiver, Judy Bazil who lives in Kansas, Mary Dee Ann Ybarra who lives in Texas and Mel Walker who lives in Worland. "Three girls and a boy, we kept on until we got the boy. Oh, my," Walker said.

After her children got out of school, Walker went to work selling Avon. After selling Avon for about 20 years she worked a variety of jobs. She explained that she had worked at Mildred's Dress Shop until it was sold, worked at the Worland Middle School working with special education, worked at the nursing home and finally worked with her husband at the Boys School, retiring together.

Walker's daughter Linda Farris has fond memories of the years that her mother sold Avon. "It was like Christmas every time an order came in, we loved to help sack those orders up," she said.

Health issues have caused Walker to stop doing many of the things she used to love to do like painting, crocheting, reading, writing to pen pals, ceramics and attending services at the First Southern Baptist Church in Worland, which she has been a member of since 1956. "We haven't been attending lately because it is so hard for her to get out, so we have been watching church on TV," Farris said.

Farris stated that even though Walker's mobility is very limited, her spirits are good and she prays quite a bit. Walker enjoys sitting and watching out the window with her cat BeeBee, which they just adopted from the New Hope Humane Society a couple weeks ago.

Walker figures that she has between 25-30 grandchildren and great-grandchildren and about four great-great-grandchildren and is looking forward to a birthday party on Aug. 19 with additional family coming from Oklahoma to celebrate the occasion.