West Ham United were welcomed to Jacksonville, Florida by the family of a former Hammer with an incredible life story, Charlie Walker.
A left-back, Walker was born in Nottingham in 1911, raised in Sheffield, and was on the books of both Manchester United and Arsenal without playing a single first-team game. In early 1935, at the age of 23, Walker was loaned to Southern League club Margate, who had become Arsenal’s official ‘nursery’ club.
It was while Walker was playing in Margate that he visited Bowen Bros newsagents in The Parade and fell for the girl who sold him his morning newspaper, keen Margate supporter Joyce Bowen. The pair agreed to go out on a date and eventually became a couple.
Walker returned to Arsenal at the end of the 1935/36 season and, in September 1936, transferred to West Ham. He debuted in a 4-1 Second Division win over Leicester City at the Boleyn Ground and immediately established himself as a regular in Charlie Paynter’s team.
All the while, he and Joyce’s relationship continued to blossom and they were married at Margate’s Holy Trinity Church in 1937. Walker’s former Arsenal and Margate teammate Ernie Tuckett was best man, while Margate player-manager Jack Lambert helped hold a gate over the happy couple as they left the church.
The newlyweds lived in east London, where Walker remained a West Ham regular until the outbreak of the Second World War saw the Football League suspended in September 1939. In its place, regional competitions were introduced, while the FA Cup was replaced by the Football League War Cup.
Walker started all seven out of eight ties as the Hammers defeated Chelsea, Leicester City, Huddersfield Town, Birmingham and Fulham to reach the final at Wembley Stadium, where he was in the team that defeated Blackburn Rovers 1-0 in front of 42,399 supporters on 8 June 1940.
He then joined the Royal Air Force and was posted to India, where he joined a Services football team and toured alongside other professional players who had joined up, playing matches to entertain the troops on an All-India tour in 1944. At the war’s end, he returned to West Ham but, citing the strains of conflict and the effects of the climate, he never played another Football League game for the Club. Instead, Walker returned to Margate for two successful seasons as a title-winning player-manager, then finished his career with Ashford Town and Ramsgate, while he and Joyce also ran a grocery business.
When their daughter Carole married an American airman based at RAF Manston and moved to the US, the couple decided to follow her across the Atlantic Ocean and settled in New Jersey, where Walker worked as a draftsman for electronics company Magnavox, then moved south to Jacksonville, where he worked in his son-in-law’s TV repair shop.
Charlie Walker passed away in Jacksonville in May 1990, aged 78, but his daughter has remained in the city, bringing up her own children, and Carole was there with her own daughter Kathleen to welcome West Ham when the squad visited EverBank Stadium for an open training session last weekend.
There, she met the Club’s modern-day trophy-winning left-back, Aaron Cresswell, and enjoyed spending time with fellow Hammers from all over the United States, and many others visiting from her homeland.
“I love football!” Carole smiled. “Dad played for Arsenal and West Ham and then after the war he came back and played for and managed Margate, Ashford and Ramsgate and they won everything they could possibly win, the Kent League and Kent League Cup.
“We’ve always kept in touch with West Ham and when our granddaughter, who is a neurologist, went to London to study, we contacted David Gold’s family and she visited Upton Park, where my Dad played, and watched a game.
“I am a big West Ham fan and I watch every game on the television. It was brilliant to see the team win a trophy last year, so I am so happy to meet the players!”
