Letter from James Pickens Walker Jr. on Southern Collegian letterhead, page 2, [1 February 1933]
Book 2, Page 131 ·1933
Transcription
The second sheet of the letter begun on the previous page, on identical Southern Collegian letterhead.
am really not going to let you pay for it and there’s no other way to do it. It’s really an important thing and means a lot to anyone who knows what O.D.K. stands for. If any one wears an O.D.K. key he makes a mighty good first impression upon anyone who knows about the society, and there are lots who do know of it too as it’s a national organization. So please Dad let me draw some of that money out of the bank.
We had a fine swimming trip—beat W & M 42–24 and took Geo. Washington over by the same score. Va was a little tougher, the score being 35–31. We meet Duke here on Saturday and then Johns Hopkins the following week-end.
Hope you liked my grades,
[signed in flourished pen:] Bo
AI Notes
Second sheet of a typed letter on identical printed Southern Collegian letterhead, continuing the appeal for O.D.K. initiation funds begun on p130. Pickens then reports on Washington and Lee’s recent swimming-team trip: W&L beat William & Mary 42–24, George Washington by the same score (42–24), and Virginia 35–31; upcoming meets are Duke (at home Saturday) and Johns Hopkins (the following weekend). The signature is in a single flourished hand and reads ‘Bo’ (a personal nickname). [The use of ‘Bo’ as a Walker / McEwan family nickname is suggestive — Mary Ann Walker’s husband Lt. Oswald Beverley McEwan was also called ‘Bo’ — but the dates make that impossible here: Mary Ann Walker did not marry Bo McEwan until May 1941, eight years after this letter; this earlier ‘Bo’ is the signator James Pickens Walker Jr.'s own youth nickname. Note also the related p046 album page, a 1901 W&L varsity football team photograph identifying the recipient ‘Dad’ = James Pickens Walker Sr. as a W&L fullback 1901–03.]
Pickens (James Pickens Walker Jr., b. 5 Jan 1912) was a student at Washington and Lee University; internal evidence dates this letter to 1 February 1933, his senior year. O.D.K. — Omicron Delta Kappa, the national collegiate leadership honor society — was founded at Washington and Lee in 1914. Both of his ODK-era reference points were W&L institutions: he wrote on the literary-magazine letterhead, and he swam intercollegiately. The recipient, his father James Pickens Walker Sr., had himself been a W&L varsity football fullback 1901–03 (see p046 in this book).