David Eugene Walker
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On July 24, 2020, Dr. David Walker died after a sudden and brief illness. Dr. Walker was preceded in death by his father Luke Eugene Walker, his mother, Dorothy Strickland Walker, and his brother Steven C. Walker. He is survived by his beloved wife Bonnie, stepchildren Ben (Jennifer Cloe) Wieseman, Beth (William) Pendergraph, and grandson Holden Pendergraph in addition to cousins and nieces in Alabama, Georgia, and Texas. Dr. Walker was born in Selma, Alabama in 1947 and spent his childhood there until leaving for Auburn University where he majored in electrical engineering. After briefly working for Alabama Power Co., he entered Florida State University where he earned an M.A. and Ph.D. in philosophy. Dr. Walker joined the faculty at Auburn University Montgomery in 1980 where he taught for thirty years before retiring in 2010. David placed an especially high value on friendship and was boastful of the high moral and intellectual virtues of his close friends. Because of the unconditional love of his family and friends, and his passion for philosophy, David lived a rich and fulfilling life which he believed would be the envy of anyone. David was especially fond of the following passage from an essay by Bertrand Russell- a passage that David felt eloquently expressed his own view of the universe and man's place in it: "Brief and powerless is Man's life; on him and all his race the slow, sure doom falls pitiless and dark. Blind to good and evil, reckless of destruction, omnipotent matter rolls on its relentless way; for Man, condemned today to lose his dearest, tomorrow himself to pass through the gate of darkness, it remains only to cherish, ere yet the blow falls, the lofty thoughts that ennoble his little day; disdaining the coward terrors of the slave of Fate, to worship at the shrine that his own hands have built; undismayed by the empire of chance, to preserve a mind free from the wanton tyranny that rules his outward life; proudly defiant of the irresistible forces that tolerate, for a moment, his knowledge and his condemnation, to sustain alone, a weary but unyielding Atlas, the world that his own ideals have fashioned despite the trampling march of unconscious power."
Services will be private. Online Guest Book available at www.gassettfuneralhome.net