2024 Jingle Bell Parade marshal: Nancy Walker to be honored for her decades of creating happiness

Nancy Walker has never been one to criticize others, but she keeps thinking Gainesville’s Wonders of Christmas Committee could have found someone more deserving to honor as the 2024 Jingle Bell Parade marshal. 

[Reporter checks notes. Nope. No one deserves the honor more than Nancy, who has been involved with Gainesville’s annual Christmas event forever, served as Hootin an Hollarin committee chairperson for, as she says, “Lord knows how long,” and led the army of volunteers that has made the Ozark County Toy Drive a success for decades.]

Wonders of Christmas chairperson Paula Rose, who took over the annual festival’s top job from Nancy a few years ago, agrees that Nancy totally deserves the honor of presiding over the popular evening Christmas parade in this year’s event, scheduled for Friday, Dec. 6, on the Gainesville square. Vendor booths open and music begins at 5 p.m., followed by the Mr. and Miss Merry Christmas contest at 6 p.m. The Jingle Bell Parade is scheduled to step off at 7 p.m.

“She amazes me,” said Paula, “especially at her age. At 84, she still does a lot more community service than most young people do.”

Devoted community volunteer

This is the first year Nancy is “plumb out of” all the leadership roles she has played in her hometown’s biggest volunteer service events for the last half-century or so. She handed over the Hootin an Hollarin chairperson title to Paula in 2021. (She planned to retire in 2020, but when that year’s celebration was canceled due to the covid pandemic, she continued working jointly with Paula to lead the committee one more time until the beloved festival resumed the next year.) 

She also retired from the Wonders of Christmas committee, including her longtime job of organizing its Mr. and Miss Merry Christmas contest. 

And after serving one last time in 2023 as the leader of the Ozark County Toy Drive, a massive charitable effort that, for nearly 60 years, has given parents free Christmas gifts for their children, she turned over that job to sisters Karla Smith and Kris Ledbetter, who have renamed the event Operation Christmas Wish. This year’s event will be held from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. Saturday, Dec. 14, at the First Baptist Church’s event center on Third Street in Gainesville. 

Nancy had helped with the toy drive since it started in the early 1960s, when members of the Young Homemakers Extension Club gathered in the courthouse basement to wrap used, donated toys in old newspaper to be handed out to those in need. The event was called Toys for Tots back then, and donors were asked to bring in any broken toys early so they could be repaired before the Christmastime give-away. Nancy became the project leader in 1982. All the gifts given these days are new.

As the years passed, most of the “young homemakers” grew old, and the club eventually dissolved. But Nancy kept the toy drive going. The event grew over the years and evolved into a giant, one-day, carefully organized extravaganza when toys, clothing and food items (that Nancy bought throughout the year with donated funds) were distributed to parents who selected from a wide range of offerings that were then gift-wrapped on-site by high school volunteers.

In recent years, the toy drive has provided Christmas gifts for an average of 250 to 350 Ozark County families, including between 400 and 600 kids – or more.

Last year also marked Nancy’s retirement as teacher of the First Baptist Church’s rambunctious class of 4-, 5- and 6-year-olds in its annual Vacation Bible School program. It was a challenging, weeklong job that she enjoyed every summer for more than half a century. Well, every summer but one.

“I taught Vacation Bible School for over 50 years,” Nancy recalled last week. “One year I taught the sixth-graders, and I said I would no longer teach sixth grade, because they were a lot smarter than me, and they made no bones about it. After that, I went back to the 4-, 5- and 6-year-olds. You could do anything with them, and they thought it was wonderful.”

Looking back on Nancy’s many decades of volunteer service to her church and community, it’s pretty clear that her overall goal has been to create happiness wherever she can. 

A lot of fun and a giving personality

One reason Nancy lasted so long in all these roles is that she’s fun to work with. Linda Harlin can vouch for that. For decades, she and Nancy worked together on the Hootin an Hollarin Committee. Linda created the Hootin an Hollarin queen pageant in 1964 and directed it for many years afterward, often with Nancy assisting the contestants with finding dresses or writing their one-minute talks. Since turning over the pageant to other directors, Linda has continued as the committee’s publicity chair. 

Linda’s husband, the late John Harlin, served as Hootin an Hollarin chairperson for many years – until persuading Nancy to take the job in the early 1990s. 

“I admire Nancy more than I can say,” Linda said last week in an email to the Times. “She is an awesome friend. . . . She is such a pleasure to work with, and she certainly lives her faith in every way. We have a lot of fun together, and I always look forward to being with her.”

Paula Rose, who inherited Nancy’s leadership roles on the Hootin an Hollarin and Wonders of Christmas committees, agrees. She, Linda and Nancy try to have lunch together once a month simply because they enjoy each other’s company. “We make quite the odd threesome,” Paula said with a laugh. “They’re both good-hearted people.

“In her everyday life, Nancy is always giving,” Paula said. “Every time we go out to eat, she wants to pay for my meal or my dessert or my gas – and most of the time we’re in her vehicle! That’s just her personality.”

Nancy also gives away the credit for anything she accomplishes, Paula said. “Everything she’s done, she’ll say the good Lord did it, or the good Lord helped her. She never takes credit herself.”

Nancy’s strong faith is the most impressive thing about her, said Paula. “Her strong convictions – she doesn’t just talk the talk. She walks the walk.”

First Baptist Church pastor Mason Eslinger says Nancy is one of the “staples” in the church’s congregation. Besides all those years of teaching VBS, she has “always cooked a ham or turkey for our holiday meal,” Mason said. 

She sits on a stool and sings with the church choir every Sunday. She buys flowers anytime someone ends up in the hospital or to funerals. And she still shows up for Sunday school and Wednesday night Bible study “and has great input,” Mason said, adding that she’s “always around” whenever something’s happening at the church.

A story in the Sept. 11, 1996, edition of the Times announcing that Nancy had been selected by the Gainesville Lions Club as the Ozark County Citizen of the Year also reported that she and husband Bobby “are the longest-listed members of the First Baptist Church.”   

The story cited Nancy’s many volunteer and work-related jobs, noting she had been “coordinator of Hootin an Hollarin for three years, and was coordinator for the queen pageant for nearly 15 years before that. She is coordinator for Toys for Tots and coordinator for Mr. and Miss Merry Christmas. She is a part-time hairdresser and is engaged full-time in the family’s 800-acre dairy operation as bookkeeper and co-manager.” 

‘That’s how you can help’

Nancy has a special way of recruiting others to help her and the good Lord get stuff done, Paula said, describing how, after a Hootin an Hollarin Committee meeting in 2017, on which Paula served as organizer of the bed races, Nancy “sneaked in” a request. 

“She said, ‘You know, we have a little Christmas festivities group. Would you consider coming and helping us?’” Paula recalled. “I said yes, I could help. So I came to a meeting; there were only four of us there. One was in charge of Mr. and Miss Merry Christmas, and one was in charge of the vendors. Nancy said, ‘We have everything covered except the parade.’ She turned to me and said, ‘Could you cover the parade?’ I said, ‘I thought I was just coming along to help,” and she said, ‘Well, that’s how you can help.’”

Nancy always modeled hard work, dependability and humor to her fellow committee members. And she kept going despite health challenges and minor accidents that might have stopped someone with less determination. After a couple of falls, Nancy showed up at a committee meeting using a cane and sporting two black eyes. 

“It’s hard to say no to someone who has black eyes from falling and uses a cane but is still there doing her job,” Paula said. “It’s hard to say, ‘No, I can’t do it. You go on and keep doing it.’”

‘You have to get up and go on’

Nancy is an Ozark County native who describes herself as “country to the core.” She grew up as an only child on the farm north of Gainesville owned by her parents, Horace and Edith Landers Gaulding. Beginning at age 4, she accompanied her mother to the one-room schools wherever “Miss Edith” was teaching. “There was a little desk right up front for me,” she said.  

She married Bobby Walker in September 1957 during their senior year at Gainesville High School. (She always wants folks to know she wasn’t pregnant when the two teenagers married. Their son Clint was born a year later, in September 1958. Their younger son, Curt, was born in February 1963.) 

Nancy is quick to laugh about just about everything, but she and Bobby have also known the hardest grief any parents can experience. Their two sons died unexpectedly at early ages – Curt at age 30 in 1993 and Clint at 47 in 2008. 

Despite that unimaginable heartache, Nancy keeps going. In a 2021 interview with the Times, she said, “If it would help to lay on their graves and cry, I would do that, but you have to get up and go on. I’m just thankful for the protective shield God puts around you in those times.”

She’s also grateful for the many friends and relatives who’ve supported her and Bobby through those tragedies, and she puts her energy into giving back to this community she’s known and loved all her life.

One example of how Nancy “got up and went on” came about a month after Curt’s death on Oct. 18, 1993. In its Nov. 24 edition, the Times reported that Nancy was seeking donations for that year’s Toys for Tots program, which she was leading. “The only qualification for the child is a need,” the story said. 

The toy give-away occurred as usual, and in its Dec. 22, 1993, edition, the Times published a letter from “Nancy and the Children,” thanking everyone whose donations made it possible for the Young Homemakers Club to provide toys to 287 kids in need. “Your kindness will not be forgotten,” Nancy wrote, adding, “I have worked with special care on the toys this year in memory of Curt, as he especially loved the Christmas Season and always helped me prepare for this event.”

Beloved by her family

As special as she is to her friends, her church and her community, Nancy is even more beloved by her family. And the feeling is mutual. During the years when some of their grandsons were working in the oil fields of North Dakota (one still is), she and Bobby drove the thousand-mile distance several times to visit them and bring them gifts from home.

And, although it’s pretty hard to believe (especially for those of us with bad attitudes about cooking), for many of the years Nancy served as Hootin an Hollarin Committee chair, she also hosted a big family dinner at her home on Harlin Drive after every Hootin an Hollarin parade on Saturday of the festival. 

How big? “Oh, 50 to 100 people, easily,” recalled Nancy’s granddaughter Crystal Walker House. Nancy borrowed folding tables and chairs from the church so everyone had a place to sit, she said. And as tired as she must have been, Nancy made sure the gathering was fun for everyone. “She’s always got something funny to say,” said Crystal. 

Although those big Hootin an Hollarin dinners, like Nancy, are now retired, she still cooks Sunday dinner every week for her grands and great-grands. And she and Bobby still host a Christmas Eve gathering for their four grandkids and their families. 

And as if she doesn’t have enough relatives already, Nancy pretty much adopts everyone she meets. “She treats every single person like family,” said Crystal. “All the years I can remember, she has kept extra wrapped gifts under the tree, just so she could find people along the way during the week before Christmas and pretend they were part of the family.” 

Crystal expects to find those nameless gifts under the tree again this year “just in case someone extra comes.”