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John B. Walker

Physician

Centurion, 1912–1942

Full Name John Baldwin Walker

Born 16 January 1860 in Lodi, New Jersey

Died 13 April 1942 in New York (Manhattan), New York

Buried Trinity Church Cemetery and Mausoleum, Manhattan, New York

Proposed by Samuel W. Lambert and William M. Polk

Elected 6 April 1912 at age fifty-two

Century Memorial

One of the most important experiences of Dr. John Baldwin Walker’s long and active career came during the World War when he was no longer a young man. He volunteered his services to the army, was finally sent abroad and became commander of a Base Hospital in France. He received the D.S.M. for his distinguished and successful work there and for his great services as a consultant in this country during the demobilization period. In preparation for his work as a surgeon, after his graduation from the Harvard Medical School and a two-years house surgeonship at the Boston City Hospital, he spent three years abroad, studying chiefly in Vienna and in London. As a result of this experience he was one of the first surgeons to introduce the plating of fractures in this country, a skill that served him well in France. He taught and lectured as well as practiced and for twenty-eight years was Professor of Clinical Surgery at the College of Physicians and Surgeons. After his return from the war he never resumed his active practice but was a consultant at a number of hospitals. His interests, which were chiefly in philanthropies and church work—he was a vestryman of Trinity Church—kept him busily occupied. In his earlier days he was an habitué of the Club, where his quiet and unassuming manners, a capacity for listening, and his love of comradeship brought him a wide circle of friends.

Geoffrey Parsons
1942 Century Memorials