Mary Louise Walker, an 81 year old resident of Trenton, MO passed away Monday evening, June 12, 2017 at her residence, while under hospice care.
The body was cremated. A Mass of Christian Burial will be held at 10:30 a.m. on Saturday, June 17, 2017 at St. Joseph’s Catholic Church in Trenton. A private burial ceremony on the family farm on “Tick Ridge” Macon County will be held at a later date.
She was born to Charles and Ruby Dixson on October 27, 1935 not in a hospital, but in a small house on the family farm between Macon and Atlanta, MO.
She attended a Atlanta Elementary in a one room school house called New Fairview and then Atlanta high school. She attended school with many family members and close friends and was an accomplished athlete who enjoyed playing basketball, softball, and volley ball. Her love of those sports stayed with her, and later in life she would coach girls pee-wee and little league softball.
After graduating from High School she attended the Burlington Beauty Academy and received her cosmetology license for Iowa and Missouri.
She married Thomas William Walker on October 27, 1956 at the Catholic Church in Bevier Missouri. At the time there was a new Catholic Church being constructed in Macon and the Parish was meeting in a John Deer building for worship, and she wasn’t keen on the idea of being married in an implement shed.
The family moved to Trenton when Mark was about five years old, and lived in a trailer park on the east side of 65 Highway, across from the Gables motel, which is gone now.
When Murray was about five years old, the family bought the house where she would reside for the rest of her life.
Mary Lou volunteered as the den mother for the boy’s Cub Scout pack, and as they got older she and Thomas looked forward to getting all their kids out of the house while they were still relatively young. However their fourth son, Matthew, arrived in February of 1973.
When there was only one child at home, she attended Trenton Junior College (now known as North Central Missouri College) and received her Administrative Degree, latter attending Kirksville Teachers College (Now known as “Truman University”) for three semesters.
With her last son in High School, she was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma and ended her formal education to seek treatment. After a long period of chemotherapy, radiation, and finally a bone marrow transplant, she was cancer free and continued her life.
Though she wasn’t born into a Catholic family, she had many Catholic friends and neighbors, and was baptized as Catholic before she married. She considered it a gift, and life changing. She was active in her church as catechism teacher and in the St. Anne’s Society, and did volunteer work at the Peter Pan School and for various projects with Church Women United. She was fiercely pro-life and gave often to Catholic charities.
Gone before her is her husband Thomas William Walker and her parents.
She is survived by four sons and their spouses, Mark Thomas and Kathy Walker, Michael Charles and Mary Walker, Murray James and Mindy Walker, Matthew Dixson and Rhonda Walker; nine grandchildren, Kyle Walker and Laken Hafner, Cari Evans, Aaron Walker, Fiona Walker, Dustin Pratt, Dillon Pratt, Rachael Pratt, and Brittany Pratt; nine great grandchildren,Jasmine, Brooke, Haley, and Isabel Walker, Zoey and Jaxson Evans, Emmet and Wyatt Hafner, and Riker Pratt; one brother, James Marvin and his wife Cheryl Dixson; nieces and nephews, Mellisa and Doug Cox, Jamie and Chris Pemberton, and Mitchell Dixson; great nephews, Colby and Grant Pemberton; also surviving are many cousins, friends, and neighbors.
Memorial contributions are suggested to St. Joseph’s Catholic Church or Humanae Vitae; they can be left at or mailed to Whitaker-Eads Funeral Home, 813 Custer, Trenton, MO 64683.
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