In Memory of Jeannette Walker
Spouse: Charles Walker
Children: Christina, Catherine
DOB: July 15, 1944
Blessing: December 22, 1976
Ascension: March 11, 2026
Seonghwa Ceremony: Mar 21, 2026 11:00 AM CT at the 1710 W Airport Fwy, Irving, TX, 75061
Zoom: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/82811817324?pwd=77qUhLaljL90aSWQIySLPnHgRzRp1D.1
Mary Jeannette Walker was born in Wichita Falls, Texas on July 15, 1944, the first daughter and second child of Leslie Curry, Sr. and Elvira Helen Kramer Curry. Eventually settling in Houston, her parents would have 2 more daughters, and the family would dub her “Marinette” from her first name – Mary Jeannette.
Jeannette possessed a natural ear for musical harmony and often reminisced about the musicality of her home and singing with her parents. In fact, as a teen, she sang on the televised Arthur Godfrey Talent Show. She graduated from Waltrip High where she was active in soft ball, choir, drill team, and was scholastically always in the top of her class.
Attending Centenary College in Shreveport for one year, she transferred to the University of Texas in Austin where she met Charles, her future husband. After graduation she fulfilled a wish to travel to Europe and spent significant time in Finland and visited Russia, England and Italy. Back in Austin she rekindled her relationship with Charles, whom she married on March 23, 1971. They decided to motorcycle the US and Canada – their great adventure, which would lead them to being invited to a dinner program in San Francisco on 44 Page St in the spring of 1972. On that first night they met Rev. Moon who happened to be staying there.
Jeannette powerfully felt this community of believers was where she would plant herself and pursue the realization of God and Jesus’s dream of One Family of Mankind under God. On Dec. 22, 1976, she and Charles were Blessed in Holy Marriage with 34 other married couples in a ceremony officiated by Rev. and Mrs. Moon at Belvedere Estate in New York.
They settled in Dallas and were blessed with the birth of two lovely daughters, Christina Elizabeth, born on her father’s birthday in 1979 and Catherine Johanna in 1983. Catherine’s delivery was incredibly rapid and complications at birth left her permanently brain damaged such that Catherine would have special developmental needs and require her mother’s lifelong devotion. Jeannette plunged herself into learning every form of therapy and motor skills development to help her youngest daughter in any and every way possible.
As Catherine grew and her care became more stabilized, Jeannette found her way to becoming a member of Sweet Adelines, a global organization of women who love to sing barbershop harmony and Dallas’s award-winning chapter - the Rich-Tones Chorus, with whom she sang and danced and competed from 1996-2024. She truly loved this part of her life.
As if that were not enough, from 1999-2001, whenever she could squeeze out time, Jeannette joined Japanese sister missionaries visiting churches throughout Dallas, who were promoting Christian unity and family-building ministries. Jeannette often felt the spiritual closeness of her maternal grandfather, Adolf Kramer, a major state level contributor to Lutheran education. From 2003-2013 she served as the DFW Coordinator of the American Clergy Leadership Conference, established to fulfill Jesus’ prayer for ‘perfect’ unity in the Body of Christ.
Though Jeannette was shy to speak, with grace she ministered through music to countless clergy and their congregations as a troubadour of the Holy Spirit. She was instrumental in holding monthly prayer breakfasts for clergy.
Jeannette will be remembered for her love of and devotion to God, and her family. She is survived by her husband of 55 years, Charles; her daughters, Catherine and Christina Walker Murphy (David) and five grandsons; Walker, Dillon, Cooper, Hudson, and Archer; her elder brother Leslie Whitfield Curry, Jr, her sisters, Barbara Lynn Hanvey and Linda Lee Conway and numerous nieces and nephews.
Flowers: Please send to the church.
