Maxine C Walters

is honored with a Medium Paver from Ronald Walters.

I grew up like most blacks in the City of Wichita, confident of the future, but facing formidable odds, and I was fortunate to have had the love and assistance of very strong women like the matriarch of my extended family, Julia Walters ("Granny"), her daughters Lucille, Alma, Pauline, and Cleo, and my maternal grandmother Virginia (Fray) Norwood ("Mimi"), and her daughters, Doris and Shirley. But the strongest female influence in my life from birth to maturity and beyond is the person I honor with this tribute, my mother, Maxine Walters.

She was born at 17th and Ohio streets, on August 17, 1921, to Armenter and Virginia Fray, as the oldest of three girls and a boy, and she left East High School to become a wife as World War II began. Her ability to overcome difficulty was no doubt developed by growing up in a large family with meager finances and the challenge of keeping a growing family together with a husband shipped to so many countries during the war.

After the war, we five children were lucky she was at home during our formative years, where she forcefully insisted on good behavior, correct English, reading books and good grades, with Dad's support. She vigorously supported our activities in church, as a PTA member, and in our recreation. And when I became involved in the Wichita sit-in movement in 1958, she was a rock of encouragement.

She went to work in the 1960s, becoming active in community affairs and being appointed to the board of the Wichita Area Community Action Program. Then, when my father's health declined in the 1970s, she courageously completed her GED and enrolled at Wichita University as a 50-year-old coed where she took courses at night and on weekends. As a senior, she was appointed to an important position as an investigator with the Kansas Civil Rights Commission, the position from which she retired. She continues to give to the Wichita community through her church and other activities.

My mother's courage, her emphasis on close family ties, her tender care of Dad in his last days, and her strong social conscience are reflected in the success of her children and the esteem of her many friends. For these great gifts there is no greater love.

Maxine Claudia Walters, a devoted wife, mother, family member and community worker is a person whose strength of personality and caring spirit has set an exemplary path for any person and especially, any young woman to follow. The City of Wichita is better for her having lived here and for the family she has nurtured in it. She is truly a Heroine.

Submitted by Dr. Ronald Walters

July 28, 1998