The History of the Walker Center:
In 1867, Eliza Harding Walker returned as a new widow with four children to her family’s hillside in Newton. Behind her was fourteen years in eastern Turkey under the auspices of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions, the outreach vehicle of Congregational churches. Before her, a new challenge to receive the children of missionaries from stations where safety and education could not be provided.

Added to Mrs. Walker’s steely determination was the generosity of her family and laypeople. Over the years, a campus with multiple houses developed on her family’s land. Mission families – many of whom spent their entire professional lives in the field – came to think of Walker as “home”. They trained here before deployment; their children came to be educated in the Newton schools; furloughs were spent at Walker. As the need for housing children decreased, more missionaries returned to live in retirement at Walker.

In a world where missionaries now go as technical assistants to partner churches, often for short periods of time, the need for retirement housing diminished. Beginning in the late 1980’s, Walker Center’s resident population became more diverse. World issues, always central to the Walker community, became personified through the resident presence of Chinese and Tibetan student activists, Walker-sponsored programs reflected new manifestations of historic concerns for peace and justice, including the impact of globalization upon the poor.

Throughout the years, most institutions discover that their missions evolve in response to need and the times. That has also been Walker Center’s experience as we look to refresh our vision to meet the changing needs of today’s social activitists. Our expectation is that we will look ahead to those new occasions that teach new duties to meet the new challenges.