Over the weekend, a graduate assistant in Boise State’s football program sadly passed away. According to the Boise State Football Twitter account, Andrew Walker passed out while out on a run and was taken to the hospital, where doctors tried unsuccessfully to save his life.
In a statement, Boise State Football Coach Andy Avalos remembered Walker as an unbelievable young man with the world in front of him. “His infectious smile and energy will not be forgotten. Those of us who were lucky enough to be graced by his presence will carry it in us from here forward,” said Coach Avalos.
Walker was 23 years old.
Related Post; Andrew Walker Obituary
Andrew Walker, who passed away at the age of 85, once quipped that the Commonwealth was more likely to make one feel like a famous journalist than London. He served as the BBC World Service’s Commonwealth reporter for many years and, at one point, served as the organization’s chairman. Along with writing two books on the Commonwealth and a later book honoring the BBC World Service and its then 60-year history, he also coached journalists in their home nations.
He attended Ravenscroft prep school in Devon before receiving a scholarship to St. Paul’s School in London. He was born in Cornwall, the son of a doctor. His first work after graduating from high school in 1943 was as a teaboy for the Evening Standard. Then he was drafted and served in Germany, Egypt, and Palestine. Walker worked for the East Anglian Daily Times in Ipswich, the Derby Evening Telegraph, the Cambridge Daily News, and the Muswell Hill Record in north London after being demoted in 1947. Later, he went back to London where he worked as a journalist for the business publication Chemical Age.
In 1955 the BBC took him on as a trainee in what was then the BBC External Services, first as a subeditor and then chief subeditor of the newsroom. A switch to the Central Office of Information in 1966 gave him a glimpse of public relations. But, as the job entailed touring abroad with ministers, it also gave him a taste of the Commonwealth. When he returned to external services a year later, it was as a Commonwealth correspondent. He had found his metier and remained in this role until his retirement in 1985, by which time he was also a defense correspondent.
When Walker visited Ghana in 1978, it was extremely tense when it came to Commonwealth relations. General IK Acheampong then ruled the nation and held a referendum to see whether the populace approved of his military rule. A judge was appointed as an electoral commissioner with the covert mandate to produce the correct outcome; instead, he fled the scene. After troops had been dispatched to the judge’s office due to “a BBC man putting out false information,” Walker learned of this and attempted to telex the tale. His script was taken away. He taped his scoop and had it smuggled out of the country by an unidentified traveler. Before his scoop was reported, Walker himself traveled by taxi and on foot out of Ghana.
As chairman of the Commonwealth Journalists Association, he conducted classes in journalism, especially in Africa. He tried to spread the view that a free press was essential for the state as much as for the individual because it could expose faults that could be corrected before they became runaway disasters. The authorities and his pupils were sometimes startled by his maxims, but they tended to ask him back. Read Full Story
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