Roscoe Kersey was born in Wichita, Kansas, in June of 1914, and returned home to the farming community of Mulvane with his mother, Lucy Eunice, and his father, Walter R. Kersey, a wheat farmer. As a young boy, Walter made clothes for his chickens. His brother, Robert, was born in 1916. Plummeting wheat prices forced the family to follow his Uncle Merlin and Aunt Ella to southern California on the train in 1923. The family purchased a two-acre ranch in San Bernardino. Walter’s father sold life insurance and real estate as well as raising chickens on his ranch. In 1928, Walter’s father contracted rheumatic fever and died.
Walter helped his mother with the chickens and excelled in high school, graduating at age 16. After two yeas at Valley Junior College, he enrolled at UCLA and received his master’s degree cum laude in 1937, at the university’s 18th commencement. He became involved with the Wesley Foundation on campus, which offered him radical alternative beliefs including pacifism. His brother followed him to UCLA where, at times, they lived together in a small fraternity of their own design, Signa Fy Nothing. It was through the Wesley Foundation that he met Eva Herman, a vivacious and talented young woman of passionate convictions (she campaigned for socialist Eugene Debs’ presidential campaign.) After a seven-year courtship they married in October, 1942.
World War II brought the young pacifist to a moral crossroads and his commitment to nonviolence compelled him to serve his country as a conscientious objector. In 1943, he began his service fighting forest fires near Porterville and had his first taste of rattlesnake meat. In January, 1945, he and Eva moved to Provo, Utah, to work in the mental hospital there. Their first child, Ross, arrived that July.
After the war ended, Walter joined a crew taking a ship of horses to donate to the Heifers for Peace Project in Poland. He found his way to Kiel, Germany. His experiences of the war-ravaged countryside and the courage of the people strengthened his commitment to the cause of peace. When he returned home, he sent most of his clothes to his new German friends. He did not buy another suit for twenty years.
He and his family then moved to Los Angeles where Walter taught junior high school. Required to sign a loyalty oath, he refused and was banned from teaching. He returned to the mental health field and started work at Patton State Hospital in San Bernardino.
During the following 18 years three more children arrived, Charles, John and Rosemary. Walter and Eva continued to be very involved with the civil rights and peace movements. They were active in the Methodist church until 1965 when the hawkish-ness of the local minister during a Sunday morning sermon inspired Eva to lead the family out from the morning service. Two weeks later, they were attending the Friends meeting in Redlands.
Several months later, Walter took a job with the State Department of Mental Hygiene in Sacramento. There he continued to be at the forefront of transforming attitudes in the care of mental patients until his retirement. He counseled young conscientious objectors throughout the Vietnam War era and was active in Friends’ local and yearly meetings the rest of his life.
Walter and Eva were devoted parents and grandparents. They traveled to Maryland and Guatemala to visit family and were much involved with Charles’ family who moved to Sacramento in 1981.
Eva died in 1989 and Walter married Frances Taylor, a longtime family friend, in 1992. Frances loved to travel and Walter joined her on many journeys to Canada, Spain, England and Central America. He vowed to attend the college graduations of all his 11 grandchildren and kept his promise. Julia, his youngest granddaughter, graduated two weeks before he died. He was in Walla Walla, WA for that ceremony.
Walt pursued his passion for education in the senior Renaissance Society at California State University, Sacramento, teaching and attending classes. He traveled to four national parks in the last year of his life. He and Frances visited family and friends in southern California this past spring.
Walter insisted that his 95-year-old body continue to serve his passion for living. He was bright, interested and interesting, involved with everyone in his presence until his last breath. He took no one for granted. He was present for anyone’s joys and sorrows and always encouraging. He did not hesitate to give voice to his principles. His love and awe of nature in all its expression was evident in his wild and productive home garden that included apricots, berries, pomegranates, roses, chrysanthemums, and iris.
We celebrate his life and our good fortune to be among his family and friends. We are his legacy.