If you look back at a map of Knoxville in 1895, you will see where Luttrell, Eleanor and Deery Streets doglegged their way out of what we now call Fourth & Gill into the eastern outskirts of the Old City north of Jackson Avenue. The southern termini of those streets disappeared to urban “renewal’ in the 1960s, under the spaghetti noodles of I-40, James White Parkway and, more recently, Hall of Fame Drive. Tiny little Lanier Street went with them along with Hudson Street.

Hudson ran on the north side of and parallel to what was then Park Street (now Magnolia Avenue), intersecting the end of Luttrell and ending at Randolph Street. Those streets were pretty much the same on a late November day in 1964.

It was the 20th, the Friday before Thanksgiving. It had been unseasonably warm that November, with many days flirting with 70 degrees or exceeding it. But that day, a wisp of winter was back in the air, the mercury never getting to 50. A junk man was pushing his cart up Hudson Street collecting scrap cardboard.

Hudson Street and Luttrell Street, highlighted in yellow, in the Old City. Randolph Street marked in blue (1895 Ogden Map via KGIS)

Now, when I say a junk man, I do not mean this in the sense that he had storefront, a la Big Don’s Elegant. Nor do I mean that he was a junk of a man, because he most certainly wasn’t. He was a man with a cart collecting the flotsam and jetsam of other businesses to then turn it over for whatever he could get for it.

His name was William Taylor Walker, and on that morning as he was trudging along with his cart he saw an unmanned semi-truck rolling down Hudson from the back of Harrison’s Produce near Luttrell Street, which ran between Humes and Randolph. Without a thought for himself, Walker tried to stop it.

Witnesses said he first tried to throw a brick under a wheel from the passenger side of the cab, but that wasn’t enough to stop the big rig. Walker then tried to run in front of the truck to get to the driver’s side door. He wasn’t fast enough. He was crushed between the front bumper of the cab and another trailer parked on the street.

Walker was taken to UT Hospital where he was pronounced dead around 9:45 a.m. He was 40 years old, unmarried, lived in a small house on Maryland Avenue in Lonsdale. That following March, a marker was placed at the intersection of Hudson and Randolph, and intersection that no longer exists, to commemorate Walker’s selfless act. Knoxville Mayor Leonard Rogers said at the dedication that it was placed “so that others may see it and be inspired to make sacrifices on behalf of his fellow man.”

William Taylor Walker (Knoxville Journal digital archives)

The ceremony was attended by Walker’s mother, Myrtle, and other family members. Also in attendance was a young UT law student named Randell Tyree. Most of us with memories before 1990 knew him as Randy and our former mayor who died this past November. Tyree is the one who felt like Walker’s efforts to stop the truck deserved recognition, and with the help of Knoxville News-Sentinel columnist Bert Vincent, got a campaign started to make it happen.

You see the previous month, Tyree and a friend braved swimming out into Fort Loudon Lake/ the Tennessee River to save a man who had jumped from the L&N Railroad bridge. There was much hoopla and recommendations for citations and such for the two youths. Tyree felt that Walker’s social status should not keep him from being recognized, especially since he gave his life trying to make sure no else got hurt.

The marker was inscribed thusly: “He lived humbly, but died nobly,” a quote submitted by KNS reader, Mrs. Merritt H. Moore. Walker was reportedly buried in a family cemetery in McMinn County.

Beth Kinnane writes a history feature for KnoxTNToday.com. It’s published each Tuesday and is one of our best-read features.

Sources: The Knoxville Journal digital archives, Knoxville News-Sentinel digital archives, McClung digital collection-Knox County Library, The Mayors of Knoxville by Jack Neely

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