By John Fitzgerald ’04, Sports Info Assistant

It is 9 p.m. on a Monday night in late September and Norm Walker is not relaxing at home or watching Monday Night Football with the guys. Norm Walker is in the football office at The Holderness School in Plymouth, NH. He’s watching some game film and preparing a scouting report for his team’s upcoming opponent. Pretty impressive for a man 67 years young!

Who is Norm Walker? His stats indicate that he is a 1959 graduate of Williams College, an English teacher and football coach, and father of eight children. But the “scouting report” on Walker is much more impressive and detailed than this humble man would ever admit. It is not that Walker is not forthcoming (He took a break from writing his scouting report for the interview!), but he doesn’t understand what all the fuss is about.

Norm Walker has been teaching the valuable and lasting lessons of discipline, integrity, and teamwork for over 45 years. Yet his reluctance to talk about himself makes getting to know Walker a bit tricky. As a husband, father, teacher, and coach, he has touched the lives of many, yet he feels most comfortable talking about those who have touched him. He can reel off the names of past department chairs, college professors, and high school teachers as if they were the very students he teaches today.

Norm Walker '59 addresses his Holderness team

“I’m really flattered that you’re doing this,” said Walker. “I’m not sure what I did to deserve this, but…” The way Walker would have you believe it, he is just one of a number of men who have spent 45 years educating students in English, football, and the finer points of life in general.

A native of Swampscott, MA, Walker learned of Williams from Phil Jenkins ‘37, his high school English teacher. Mr. Jenkins was good friends and a former classmate of Fred Copeland, the director of admissions at the time.

“I was just a stupe at the time,” Walker says. “But I was fortunate enough to have a great English teacher who brought me up to visit Williams, and I knew right then and there that was where I wanted to go to school.” Walker had originally considered attending Bowdoin, Dartmouth, and Amherst, turning down the Lord Jeffs despite a larger financial aid package. “Things were a little different back then. The application process wasn’t as formal and selective, luckily for me.”

Walker’s first love has always been English. The son of a teacher, Walker was continuously inspired by his own teachers and professors, including Williams professors Clay Hunt and Fred Stocking. “From an intellectual standpoint, Williams had a profound effect on me,” Walker remembers. “The Socratic dialogue is such a valuable method of teaching and learning. I try to replicate in my classroom today what took place when I was a student at Williams.”

While his first love is English, Walker’s passion has always been football. He is among a select group of men to have never lost a “Little Three” game. Playing both ways as a tight end on offense and end on defense, Walker lost only two games (Tufts his sophomore year and to Trinity his senior year) in his final three years as an Eph! In his junior year, Williams’ only blemish was a tie with Tufts as they proudly took home the Lambert trophy for “Supremacy in the East.”

But for all his success on the field, Walker can only talk about the coaches and players who surrounded him. “I had the opportunity to play for Len Watters,” Walker explains. “We called him ‘The Bull,’ but he was a hell of a coach. And we had great assistants like Frank Navarro, who went on to coach at Princeton. Our freshmen coach, Jim Ostendaarp (later the long-time head coach at Amherst), was like a father to me. In fact, I named my son after him. I

“We just had a great group of guys,” Walker continues. “I think we had 44 freshmen football players, and there were 24 of us still playing by the time we were seniors. What I’ll remember the most is the camaraderie and friendships that I developed with those guys. We just had a tremendous class. Admissions must have been a little different back then, because I am not sure how they got all of us in!”

The admission process was slightly different then, as Williams had yet to admit women. Not that it was a big deal to Walker, who tied the knot while in college. “I was already an old married man by my junior year,” says Walker, who spent his junior and senior year living with the rest of the married couples on campus in the “barracks (now known as Poker Flats) down by Cole Fieldhouse.”

Never being one to waste time, it’s hard to imagine that between majoring in English, playing football, and marriage, Walker had time for anything else. But Walker also played baseball for the legendary Bobby Coombs, a former Williams graduate who played in the major leagues. “Like everyone else I met while I was at Williams, Bobby was a great guy and a joy to play for. He was a real character.”

It seems that Walker hasn’t changed much since his time at Williams. He still squeezes out every ounce of the day he can. After leaving Williams, Walker received his M.A.T. from Harvard University in 1961. He taught English in Newton, MA for 25 years and was named Teacher of the Year at Newton High School in 1977. In addition to coaching football, Walker has coached baseball, basketball, wrestling, and tennis. In 1976, the Boston Globe named him Coach of the Year.

Since moving to the Holderness School twenty years ago, Walker has been teaching English and has been head football coach, guiding his team to six New England Prep School Championships in the past 12 years, including last year. From his eight children (including Jimmy ’88) Walker has 13 grandchildren. “My wife is always telling me to retire, and if I were smart, I would,” he says. “But I would like to work until I’m 70 years old.” As usual, Walker doesn’t see what all the fuss is about, probably because he just doesn’t have the time!