Hello!! My name is Mike Walton, and this is my wife Jessica.
| This is who I am and how I got that way! Browse onward!
I was born in Louisville, Kentucky in October of 1959, at the close of the 50s and the start of the "new age"; graduated from Fort Knox High School in 1977; and from Eastern Kentucky University in 1982 and again ten years later. Here's a baby picture of me.... |
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My parents are Sergeant First Class (Ret) Robert and Moseanna (Ann) Walton. Here's a picture of my parents. Don't they look really great together? |
| My mother was best friends with the pop star Ima Reyes. Oops...you know her as Tina Turner. They both attended school at Carver High School in Brownsville, Tennesee. That's where my parents lived, dated, and later married in. |
| My mother told me that I started talking at a very early age...when I was almost two years old. My first words were "momma","peas", and "lulu". I never found out what "lulu" was. My mother prides herself on telling anyone whom will listen that "my Micheal (the ONLY person that gets to call me by that name, by the way....) was reading the large ads that the stores place in their windows back then: "peas 29 cents"! "corn 14 cents"! ". She tells people that I was too bright for kindergarten, and after two days of being there, the teachers told her that I was past ready for the first grade and that I should be "skipped" to the second grade. | My mother chose to place me in regular school, starting with the first grade, shortly after my father's "number came up", having to go to Vietnam. |
 | I have always loved Scouting.....you can read the entire story on how I became a Bobcat if you like, so I won't tell the whole deal here. Here's a photo of me in my Cub Scout uniform on that night that I became a Bobcat! Notice how I'm standing, and no, I'm NOT giving you a "peace sign"! |
| Here's a photo of me taken earlier that year...I love this photo because it was my first real school photo. This was when I was in the second grade at Hinton Street Elementary School, in the west side of Petersburg, Virginia. My best guy friend was a guy named "Petey" and that was the first time I ever heard of something called the "Military Personnel Scouts of America", or MPSA...he was a member and got me to be a member. Back then, you didn't fill out papers....just showed up like Boys Club. The MPSA ran out of money and was dead by the time I was twelve years old. My best girlfriend was named Mary Gross, and she was so sweet on me, she allowed me to see her underwear one evening in 1967! I ran into Mary years later, as she was a fellow national Exploring leader...she didn't remember right off that I was the same Mike Walton that held her hand while we watched the afternoon cartoons together on my parent's black-and-white television set. I gave Mary the second of these photos...wonder if she still has it!! |  |
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As I mentioned, I love Scouting, and it was and still is a very important part of my life. I try as hard as I can to live up to the Cub Scout Promise, the Scout Oath and Law, the Varsity Pledge, the Explorer Code and the Scout Executive's Code (wow!! What a LOT of things to remember...but they all boil down to what's in the Scout Oath and Law!). I have been a member of only one Cub Scout Pack, but several Boy Scout Troops starting with Troop 63 in Ludwigsburg, Germany. I have been a youth member of five different Councils, including the Direct Service Council. I became a member of five Explorer Posts and one Explorer Ship before I turned "legal" and 21. Since then, I have been a part of nine local Councils, the National Council, and an unofficial member of the British Scouting Association and the St.George (Catholic) Scout Association in Germany.
I have always set personal goals for myself, ever since I was old enough to understand that it was much better to have FIVE "steelies" instead of just one and TWENTY "snake eyes" instead of just two. Of course, I'm talking of marbles....and before I was five, I had more than 900 marbles, most of which I've won from sucke....er...victims on the playground of my aim and spin on the "T.I.Marble", my favorite marble, a green snake-eye. Green's my favorite color, by the way. When I was eight, I had cut out the illustrations in the back of the Scout Handbook and have attached Scotch tape to the backsides....I then lined them up in a straight line across the bottom of my dresser: the Honor Medal, the Merit Medal, the William T. Hornaday Award for Conservation, the Eagle Scout Badge, the God and Country Award, and the two trail medals illustrated. I saw them every day while I dressed for school. I have earned or received all of them with the exception of the two heroism medals, for when I saved the young Turkowski's life, all I received was a Certificate of Heroism. My mother threw it away along with all of my other "childhood things" when I left to go to college. |
| Scouting hasn't been everything in my life, however. I learned how to pray around the dinner table, and was whacked on the hands or pinched on the knees when I did NOT say "Jesus wept" before I picked up my fork or spoon. I never understood why I was to say "Jesus wept" (which I always said "Jesus Swept", because I didn't understand the significance until much later! *hehehehee*). However, it took Karen Lee Becvar, a ten-year old Catholic blonde, my true first love ever, to teach me the strenght and inward exhillaration in praying to my Savior. She taught me how to "talk with God, just like you are talking with me", out in the open field which is now an abandoned baseball field in Pattonville, Germany. For nothing more than that, she has my love forever. Before I left Germany in 1971, I gave her a long kiss and one of my dogtags, with my dad's service number on it so "you can always use the Army's locator to find us". She never did. I have spent a lot of time trying to find her...even now, using the Internet, I have only found ONE "Karen Becvar"...she's never been to Germany, she says.
I have prayed for the opportunity to tell her "thank you for being my closest friend at a very early age....for the gift of meaningful prayer and companionship that you gave me in the fourth and fifth grades." |
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| I have shared Karen's love for God and for people in several ways. One of my most important contributions to my faith was to help establish the Prichard Place Chapel's Coffeehouse, a group of youth from all backgrounds and faiths that met together on Sunday evenings for two hours in the basement of Prichard Chapel, in the Rose Terrace military community. We learned from each other and from Sam DeCapua, our advisor and mentor. I miss my fellow coffeehouse brothers and sisters... I managed to convince Teresa Risky that God does look out for those whom believe in Him, and to convince Kathie Powell that love comes in all size packages...and I got a lot of advice from Richard "Andy" Winkler, as well as him treating me as if I was his younger brother. | |
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There's so much more that I want to share about myself, but I'll let you go and read parts of one of the three books I have wrote. They tell a lot about my life and what I did for enjoyment, being a military "brat" and living in many different places. Let me know what you think, please! |
| Here's some other pictures of me...have a laugh or two, please!!
I was fortunate to serve as a national youth leader in Exploring and later Scouting. Here's a photo of me during the National Scout Jamboree in 1977 when I was reporting on the Old Kentucky Home Council's four troops: |
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My high school graduation photo. The tie is an Exploring tie and I can still get into that green suede jacket (of course it's green!) |
| It seemed that I was the only person to love this jacket...my dad had it specially made for me when he was in Korea.....real denim and patches of leather!! |  |
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I hope that you enjoy my list of my favorite sites, in addition to the ones I highlight on
The Tree. Here they are, in no order of importance:
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Thanks for taking the time to browse and read this...I enjoyed putting it together for you!