A Degree Deferred But Not Denied: Mississippi College Presents Pastor's Diploma to His Daughter

Witnessing MC President Blake Thompson presenting Rev. Barney Walker’s diploma to his daughter, Valma Walker Miller, are Walker’s family members, from left, Lee Miller, Walker’s grandson; Susan Weir, Walker’s great-granddaughter-in-law; Lucy Weir, Walker’s great great granddaughter; Trey Weir, Walker’s great-grandson; and Carol Holly, Walker’s granddaughter.

Most new college graduates who walk across the commencement stage to accept their “diplomas” and shake their university president’s hand understand that their actual graduation documents will be sent to them after the ceremony.

In the case of Rev. Barney Walker Sr. – a Mississippi College alum who opted not to participate in the exercise – his diploma took more than a century to arrive.

Walker’s decision not to attend the ceremony in 1918 was understandable: the world was in the grip of a major influenza pandemic and the United States had just entered “the War to End All Wars” one year prior. Walker had worked hard to complete his degree early before Uncle Sam could draft him into service.

Mere days after graduating from MC, Walker found himself among the thousands of Doughboys headed to France. He completed his hitch as a staff sergeant in the infantry, attended seminary for a time, and moved back to Mississippi, where he spent the bulk of his career pastoring Baptist churches at numerous locations throughout the state.

Yet Walker and the undergraduate diploma he had worked so hard to obtain remained strangers for decades.

That oversight was finally corrected July 23 during a private ceremony attended by members of Walker’s family and university officials at the Phillips House – MC President Blake Thompson’s residence at Mississippi College. Thompson formally acknowledged Walker’s academic achievement by bestowing a diploma to his daughter, Valda Walker Miller, 97.

“We’re so thrilled to present this diploma to you,” Thompson said as he handed her the coveted parchment. “And we’re glad the whole family came to see the presentation.”

With Miller as his proxy, Walker is the oldest recipient to whom Thompson has conferred a degree at Mississippi College.

“I can’t imagine what Daddy would have thought, to have been in the president’s house to receive his diploma,” Miller said. “It’s a far cry from when he used to gather eggs and sell them to have a little money to go to school.”

When Miller discovered that her father had never received his diploma from MC, she made it her mission to reclaim the document.

“My father and I were really close,” she said. “He earned that diploma, and I wanted to have it.”

With assistance from MC staff members, she began to comb through Mississippi College’s vast administrative archives to find the document. She understood that after 25 years, uncollected diplomas were usually destroyed; nevertheless, there remained a possibility that her father’s document may have been misfiled somewhere.

Every Saturday for more than a year, she spent about two hours searching for the diploma. Unfortunately, the antique parchment eluded her grasp.

That’s when Thompson and other university officials stepped in. They invited Walker’s family members to visit their patriarch’s alma mater and accept a brand-new diploma on their loved one’s behalf.

In addition to serving as a Baptist pastor, Walker also wrote and published a book, “Seven Spiritual Ships,” which detailed the seven churches in Asia Minor described in the first three chapters of the Book of Revelation. Miller still clings to one of the few remaining copies of the work. It bears an inscription, the only surviving writing sample of her father’s that she possesses. It reads, “With love to Valda, from her Dad.”

Years after the book’s publication, Miller traveled to Turkey to see the remains of the churches her father had written about: Ephesus, Smyrna, Pergamos, Thyatira, Sardis, Philadelphia, and Laodicea. She even got to stand on the very foundation stones of one of them.

Her unusual name can be traced directly to her father’s military service. In France, Walker borrowed a book that featured as its heroine a Norwegian girl named Valda. He cherished the book so much that, a full decade later, he gave the moniker to his newborn daughter.

“He never gave me a middle name – I was just Valda,” she said. “That was my special gift from him.”

The youngest of five children in a hard-scrabble Smith County farming family, Walker had an aptitude for math and science. He came to MC intent on becoming an attorney, but the specter of war drove him to complete his degree in three years.

After serving in France, Walker returned home and became superintendent of a school system. His wife, Norma, was a teacher in the system. After a few years, Walker felt the call to enter the ministry. The couple attended Southwestern Theological Seminary for a time before returning to Mississippi, where Walker preached at Baptist churches from Tunica to Poplarville. When he wasn’t pastoring, Walker would evangelize at local revivals.

All six of the couple’s children graduated from college, got married, and raised families of their own. Miller is Walker’s third child; one other sister is still living.

“To receive his diploma now is such an exciting thing for her,” said Walker’s grandson and Valma Miller’s son, Lee Miller, an adjunct faculty member in the MC School of Business. “I want to thank Mississippi College for making it happen and Dr. Thompson and his wife for opening their beautiful home to us.”

Lee Miller also received his graduate degree from MC. A transportation major at Mississippi State University, he joined the family business, Miller Transporters, that operated for many years on Highway 80 between Clinton and Jackson.

He described his grandfather as a lover of nature whose intelligence led him to the private Baptist-affiliated university.

“He was a hunter and a fisher,” Miller said. “He was a smart guy and very analytical. He could make an argument very well.

“Mississippi College was a Baptist college and it was located in a city where he could find work to pay his way through school. That was its biggest attraction to him.”

Miller said his mother will send copies of the treasured diploma to her sister and all of her nieces and nephews.

“This is very meaningful to her,” he said. “She’s going to gloat on this for a while.”