Editor’s Note: Daniel K. Walker, executive chairman, and W. Henry Walker, CEO of Farmers & Merchants Bank of Long Beach, are the great grandsons of C.J. Walker, who founded the bank in 1907 (OTCQX: FMBL).
Our father Ken Walker loved horses so much that in the late 1970s, he bought an old 5-acre dairy farm in Cerritos so he could be close to them.
After many years, officials at a church sought to buy the valuable land. He sold it to them for $1, placing the needs of the community above his own. The church still stands.
Our father passed away on Jan. 19 at the age of 97. It seems like everyone has a story about Ken Walker’s legacy of benevolence.
The 11-Year-Old Elevator Operator
Ken Walker was born in Long Beach in 1927 at Seaside Hospital, now Long Beach Memorial Medical Center. His work ethic started early when his grandfather, C. J. Walker, asked him to start working at age 11 as the elevator operator at the bank’s Long Beach headquarters.
At Poly High, Ken was a class officer, a three-year letterman and captain of the gymnastics team. After he graduated from Poly in the spring of 1944, he immediately joined the U.S. Navy, serving as a seaman on a motor launch, shuttling personnel around the Long Beach Harbor and working at the bank in his off hours.
Walker followed in his father’s footsteps in 1946, studying economics and finance at the University of Southern California, where he met Nancy MacMillan. They were married in 1948 and stayed together for 60 years until she passed away in 2008. They were a great team who raised six children.
Ken returned to F&M as a teller in 1948 and worked in almost every conceivable banking capacity. No job was too small for him. We once saw him take off his shoes to help unclog a drain on the roof.
He succeeded his father, Gus Walker, as president in 1979.
He didn’t want to be hidden away in an office, so he would sit at C.J.’s rolltop desk, which was famous at the bank. It was at this desk – which had a view of the main lobby – that he would greet customers and issue loans to them. He always did what was best for the customer.
Ken was an entrepreneurial banker who understood character first and foremost and understood where to take risks and how to do things quickly. Ken would meld F&M’s foundational elements of honesty and integrity with a unique vision all his own.
Ken led F&M through continued growth in Southern California. After seeing many residents of Long Beach migrate to Orange County, he opened new offices in cities like Lake Forest, Fullerton and Santa Ana.
He was a keen judge of character. One time in 1964, a new client and his bride-to-be needed $500 for a bed and refrigerator for their future home. Ken asked the client if he could pay the money back. The client answered yes, and Ken handed him a check. That client still banks with us today.
Ken’s conservative lending policies during this time earned F&M Bank the designation of the safest of 441 similar institutions in California by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) in 1985. Those policies and capital ratios endure to this day. Our bank has never had an operating loss since its founding in 1907.
He was more than a banker. He could fly a plane, drive a bulldozer, break a colt and throw a calf on its side.
He was involved in several other entrepreneurial activities. In 1963, Ken bought the nearly 250,000-acre Dodge Ranch for cattle in Lassen County; he also acquired farming operations in Susanville and Leemor where he grew sugar beets, cotton and grain.
Saving Polo in Santa Barbara
Our father didn’t do it for the money. He drove a station wagon; in 1958, he built his own home in Buena Park where he died.
Devout Christians, Ken and Nancy were members of the First Evangelical Free Church in Fullerton for many years. Faith was woven through everything they did.
Ken nurtured the bank’s longstanding support for nonprofits. Being a good bank meant being able to give back to the community. There wasn’t a church in Long Beach that we didn’t finance.
He helped develop Long Beach Memorial Medical Center by loaning the hospital $4 million to buy the land upon which the current medical campus now resides.
After the Rev. Robert Schuller held a sermon one day in 1955, he collected about $83, which he deposited the money in our bank. F&M helped fund the construction of Schuller’s Crystal Cathedral – one of the nation’s iconic houses of worship – and later its transfer to the Christ Cathedral.
Our mother and father also were instrumental in the rebirth of the Christian movement throughout the Young Men’s Christian Association (YMCA), directing the bank to forgive nearly $500,000 in debt owed by the Long Beach YMCA in the 1980s.
The Walker family in 1923 purchased the residence of Helena Modjeska, a famous Shakespearean performer who in 1876 immigrated to the U.S. After 63 years of long-term preservation by the Walker family, Ken facilitated the transfer of historic Modjeska House and surrounding wooded area to the County of Orange in 1986 for the purpose of establishing a park for public enjoyment.
In 1953, Ken began playing polo at the Santa Barbara Polo & Racquet Club in Carpinteria, where he would occasionally ferry his family up the coast from Long Beach in his 83-foot AVR boat. He moored his boat off Santa Claus Lane and rowed his wife, Nancy, and their two young sons, John and Howard, to shore to play polo.
In 1976, Ken, along with the assistance of two other club members, rescued the Santa Barbara Polo & Racquet Club from financial disaster by finishing a failed condo development and purchasing parcels of contiguous land for stabling and a tennis club. By 1979, the Walker family deeded all land and all improvements back to the Club at no benefit to themselves. Today, the club is heralded as one of the most viable polo clubs in the western United States.
A Banker Making a Difference
Our father never once told us that we had to join the bank. He simply said banking was a good clean job versus other industries. I (Henry) started at the bank in 1983 and took over as CEO last year, replacing my older brother (Daniel), who has worked at the bank since 1974. Ken’s grandchildren, Christine and Nolan, also now work at the bank.
When interviewed in 2008 about seeing his sons rise to executive level roles at the bank, Ken said, “F&M has long been a Walker family tradition, and seeing my children and grandchildren rise to the helm of these organizations, bringing with them a new level of business expertise, is fulfilling on many levels for me. This is more than just a business for our family, it is part of our family culture, and we take its success personally.”
He used his knowhow as a banker to make a difference in people’s lives. As we said, everyone who knows him has a good Ken Walker story.
Services will be held in February with more details to follow. Memorial contributions in lieu of flowers can be made to the C.J., Carrie D. & R. Howard Walker Foundation, 302 Pine Avenue, Long Beach, California 90802.
