Eva Walker: A Legacy of Kindness and Community Outreach
Written by Heidi Baumstark
It used to be called “the field.” Today, it’s Eva J. Walker Memorial Park in downtown Warrenton, named to honor the woman with a dream to transform a field into a park for the community she loved.
When Walker would look out her kitchen window from her house on Fourth Street in Warrenton’s Haiti Street neighborhood, she imagined an open park so neighborhood children on Alexandria Pike could have a safe place to play. Now her legacy is forever celebrated in the 5.6-acre Eva Walker Park, which includes playground facilities, a basketball court, picnic shelter, fitness pit, artwork, walking paths, and benches. It also includes the Eva Walker Park Commemorative Garden, completed in July 2022, which was funded by several nonprofits and the Town of Warrenton.
Who was Eva Walker?
Eva Walker lived in Warrenton beginning in the late 1950s with her husband, Robert, and their two daughters, Robyn Walker (now Thompson) and Sherrie Walker (now Carter). She lived there until her untimely death at the age of 48, on June 5, 1982, and Robert remained there until he passed at the age of 94 in 2021. As a civil rights leader, multitalented entrepreneur, and fashion model, Walker was an extraordinary member of the community.
Throughout her life, Walker worked to support Black youth, creating social opportunities for them, opening up her home for gatherings and fundraisers, and advocating for positive change in the neighborhood and beyond. She was also a role model for generations of Black women, teaching them lessons in beauty and etiquette.
The Park’s Inspiration
“The field” was owned by the late Dr. Aaron H. Gerber, an obstetrics and gynecology physician at the Fauquier Hospital in Warrenton. Robyn Thompson, Walker’s oldest daughter, remembers the neighborhood kids playing in the streets all the time. There was a lack of communal spaces for Black residents, but they received permission from Gerber to use his property for recreational purposes. In the early 1980s, Walker approached Gerber and encouraged him to donate his land to the town. He agreed, and initially, the land became Alexandria Park.
In December 1988, following Walker’s death, the Warrenton Town Council voted to name the park in her honor. In 2021, 33 years later, the council adopted a master plan outlining future development that included the Commemorative Garden. Ashleigh Corrin Webb, Sherrie Carter’s daughter and Walker’s granddaughter, is an artist by trade and designed the metal panels on display in the garden. Inside the park on a brick-paved patio on Horner Street are metal plaques that honor Walker’s vision for the community.
Walker’s Childhood Days
Eva Omega Jenkins Walker was born on March 17, 1934, in rural, racially segregated Fauquier County near Opal, Virginia, the daughter of John Andrew Jenkins and Eva Dixon Tackett Jenkins. At the early age of 4, she entered Routts Hill School, a one-room school in Bealeton, which is no longer standing.
She graduated as salutatorian of her class at Routts Hill, and later, valedictorian from Rosenwald High School in Warrenton. Some buildings of the old Rosenwald school are still standing, like the “building with a small red roof where Principal Hazel Weaver’s office was,” Thompson remembers. “The cinder block building with a caving roof was part of the campus. There was a two-story ‘main’ building for first through third grades, and two separate buildings, which were Mrs. Julia Smith’s and Mrs. Frazier’s classrooms.”
Adult Years
Walker received a scholarship from Virginia State College, now Virginia State University. “But she never went,” Thompson says. Instead, her beauty and wit caught the eye of Warrenton local Robert Linwood Walker, and the couple married on March 25, 1951.
Walker commuted to Washington, D.C., to attend the Ophelia DeVore School of Self-Development and Modeling for African American women. This set her on the career course of a model, designer, and certified cosmetologist. Thompson adds, “I remember Mom’s charm school teacher in D.C., Precola DeVore. We loved going when Mom was modeling in fashion shows.”
After charm school, Walker modeled in several states, including at the 1964-65 New York World’s Fair. With her training in cosmetology, she opened a beauty salon in her home on Fourth Street, naming it La Petite Sherobyn, after her two daughters. She even produced her own cosmetic line: Eva Walker Cosmetics. When she was at her beauty shop, she’d rally her customers to bring in clothes and toys for children in need. Her daughters helped clean them up and deliver them to families at Christmas.
She advocated for improved education and services, successfully lobbying county officials for the safety and advancement of her neighbors, including providing school bus transportation. As a community activist, she fought for equal rights, better education, and services for Black residents, and took part in the March on Washington on August 28, 1963.
Locally, she joined local civic leaders at the Drug Fair for a sit-in at the lunch counter. Thompson remembers, “Dad stayed home in case he had to bail them out of jail. A sigh of relief came when everything went over without incident. A double plus was being able to sit down to eat at Drug Fair.” Many credit the Walkers with the social transformations that took place there beginning in the 1960s.
Before moving to the Haiti Street neighborhood, the Walkers lived in Madisontown, a Black community in the Warrenton area. By the late 1950s, the family was living on Third Street; later, Third Street became Fourth Street, as it is today. “Mom was very creative,” Thompson shares. “She designed the addition to our house [on Fourth Street]. Her brothers were in the construction field, so they built the addition.”
More Memories of Their Mom
Carter says, “Haiti was a real community — everyone looked out for each other. If you needed to be disciplined, you might get it from someone else.” She continues, “I remember hearing Mom on the phone trying to get indoor plumbing for neighbors who didn’t have it. Others didn’t have electricity. She also organized clean-up campaigns for the neighborhood. If something was wrong in the community, she tried to make it right. And she wasn’t doing it for attention; it was just who she was.”
“Mom and Dad opened their basement — they had a jukebox. It was like a community center in our home,” Thompson reminisces. “There weren’t a lot of recreational opportunities for us, so they created them.” The sisters remember “Miss Callie” Margaret Bumbray, who established a majorette group with girls in the neighborhood. As a talented seamstress, Walker sewed their uniforms, “and we marched in the Firemen’s Parade in town on Fourth of July,” Thompson says. She adds, “Mom would bring in teen girls and we’d sit in the living room, and she would teach us proper etiquette, how to sit, and how to walk. Families got along; it was truly a neighborhood.”
Carter says, “At a young age, I remember walking around with Mom, knocking on people’s doors, collecting money for causes like the American Heart Association and the Cancer Society. If someone passed away, kids would go house to house to collect money to buy a flower spray for the funeral.”
The family hosted Muscular Dystrophy fundraisers — which included hula hoop contests — and Walker organized fashion shows to raise money for charities. She also volunteered to work as a “Gray Lady” at Fauquier Hospital. Gray Ladies were American Red Cross volunteers providing nonmedical, friendly services to patients.
The sisters’ other childhood memories include catching lightning bugs in brown paper bags to make flashlights. Walking to Safeway on Main Street was a big deal. “Mom gave me a $25 check to buy groceries,” Thompson says. “The manager knew Mom and trusted her. After shopping, I’d push the basket cart back with the balance due if the bill was over $25.”
Thompson reflects, “Mom was really smart. And humble. I think she earned people’s respect.”
In her short lifetime, Walker received numerous awards and recognitions from civic and community organizations. A true humanitarian and talented entrepreneur, she takes her rightful place among prominent women in Fauquier County.
She passed on her spirit of activism and entrepreneurship: Thompson spent decades teaching in Fauquier County Public Schools, and Carter has owned gift shops in Manassas and Warrenton and is currently researching her family’s history with hopes to publish a book.
Her legacy is grounded in Fauquier’s history, forever memorialized through Eva Walker Park. That’s a dream come true that extends beyond Walker’s community. ML
Featured photo courtesy of the Walker family.
Published in the March 2026 issue of Middleburg Life.