Profile: George Walton, from Brac to US Air Force and back

At 88 years old, Cayman Brac’s George Walton has lived a driven and varied life, earning his first money catching and selling fish to pay to go to school overseas, going on to serve as a major in the US Air Force, before returning home to his beloved island, where he has been a counsellor, hotelier, author, historian and builder of the island’s unique synagogue.

His career has taken him around the world – to the US, Asia and Europe – but it seems his heart always remained in Cayman Brac, where he has worked to preserve the stories of its people.

He recently spoke to Compass Media about his life and times as part of Older Persons Month.

Early days

Born in 1938 into a family of nine children to parents Albert and Celeste Walton, Walton grew up in what is known locally as Booby Point on the Brac’s Bluff. “Growing up, it was so isolated that they said only the booby bird wanted to live up there.”

He attended a school run by Hessie Dixon from a little room in her house in Spot Bay, where he learned his numbers and alphabet, “and, of course, you had to read the Bible before you got out of there, from cover to cover,” he recalled.

He went on to Spot Bay Primary School, where he was taught by his aunt Doris Hurlston and teacher Frederick Hill, and where all the classes were in one room. “There was a blackboard in between the classes, so you just moved from one side of the blackboard to the other side, and you were in a different grade,” he said.

His secondary school, Liberty High School in Creek, Cayman Brac’s first high school, was founded by missionaries Sam and Marjorie Chastain, from Tennessee, and although it only lasted two years, 29 students attended that school, “and we had a good crop, not lemons,” said Walton, adding that all those students had gone on to successful careers.

When Sam Chastain returned to the US due to ill health, he suggested 14-year-old Walton, in whom he saw great potential, attend the school he’d graduated from – Tennessee Temple College in Chattanooga. Walton filled out the necessary paperwork, but when he got there, he discovered the school only accepted white students, as it was still segregated in those days. Instead, he attended an adjunct school, Zion College, for three years.

While there, he occasionally worked for a surrogate teacher at Zion College, who took him under her wing. “When the civil rights law was passed, it became very unstable, and she said, ‘I need to take you out of here. I need to take you to New York and let you stay with my sons,'” Walton said.

He moved to New York and earned two associate degrees, one in dental and medical technology at Westchester Community College, and the other in nursing at Rockland Community College. On his summer breaks from college, he worked on ships as a seaman, like his father before him.

Air Force days

Walton decided he wanted to join the Air Force, but as a commissioned officer rather than a regular enlisted man. The recruiting officer in New York told him his two associate degrees were not enough to get a commission.

“So, I told him, ‘No, I’ve had enough hard times in life, and people giving me orders. I want to be in a position where I can give orders,'” he said, and informed the officer that he’d be back with a bachelor of science.

On his way home that day, he signed up for a science programme with the State University of New York. “In two years, I had my bachelor of science,” he said, and he returned to the same registering officer, who signed him up. At the age of 34, in 1972, Walton was commissioned as a first lieutenant in the US Air Force, in which he served for 20 years.

In his interview, Walton described assignments in Texas, the Philippines, California, Germany, Washington, D.C., England and Ohio. His work included treatment programmes for people dealing with alcohol and drug problems, as well as health promotion and counselling, including helping soldiers returning from the Vietnam War.

In Germany, where he earned his master’s degree, he said colleagues insisted that he learn German to work effectively in a clinic. He remembered the experience as demanding but rewarding, and said it taught him about people and professional standards across cultures.

At Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Ohio, he developed a programme to help men understand how to support their wives after mastectomies. He said medical teams prepared women for surgery, but often did little to explain to their partners what recovery and changes in their relationship might involve. He recalled advising men that their wives could need practical help and emotional understanding. “You’re going to have to understand that what she’s going through and be able to help her,” he said.

The programme, he said, was later featured by a local television station.

While in the UK, he was the health promotion coordinator for England and “all the northern air bases, from Greenland to South Africa,” he said, a job he described as “very demanding, but very stimulating.”

Returning to Cayman Brac

During his time in England, he returned for a vacation to Cayman, where he was asked to present lectures on stress management for government employees. “It was a very busy time, but it was a very rewarding time because I felt that this would be giving back to my country.”

He had bought some land on Cayman Brac, where he later built a home for him and his wife Lynne, whom he had met at school in New York, where, he said, he noticed she was “not only cute and pretty, but smart.”

She recalls, “He asked me to marry him on our second date. I told him he was crazy.”

The couple wed a year and a half later, and have been happily married for 57 years.

Following his retirement from the US Air Force in 1992, the couple moved to Cayman Brac, where Walton had bought a large traditional house, on six acres of land in Stake Bay, called Mango Manor. The couple ran a bed and breakfast at the property for many years.

“People from all over the Earth still write us at Christmas time, like we are relatives,” Walton said.

The couple also built Sea Dreams Villa nearby as an oceanfront vacation rental property.

Builder of Jewish temple

One of the most striking buildings in Cayman Brac is the circular, 28-foot-tall Temple Beth Shalom, which Walton built in 2002 as a gift to his wife, who is Jewish. He brought in Italian marble for the walls from Carrara, Italy, and placed pearl granite on the floor. Inside the temple, attendees of all religions are welcome.

When the couple wed, Walton said, he did not have to convert to Judaism as his family heritage included Jewish ancestry through his mother’s side.

His efforts in building the temple were recognised by the Commonwealth Jewish Council in 2015, when he was invited to a reception at the House of Lords dining hall in London, where he was presented with an ancient clay oil lamp from the Roman Byzantine era.

Walton also brought his professional experience back to the island, offering instruction in stress management and relaxation techniques, and establishing the Sister Island Counselling Centre. He described the centre as an effort to make support available locally, rather than sending people away from family and friends for help.

Local historian and author

Preserving Cayman Brac’s history has become another lasting commitment for Walton.

He has written about the island’s people, homes and customs, drawing on his memories and on conversations with residents whose stories, he said, had rarely been recorded.

“I knew every person in that book personally,” Walton said of his book “West of Booby Point and the East End Cays.”

“I lived that life, so I could write with authority because I knew the people, I knew the houses.”

His wife, Lynne, has also written a book based on the tales he shared with her. “From the time we met, I used to tell her stories, in the kind of talk that Brackers talk, and I never thought that she was even listening to me,” he said, smiling at Lynne.

The couple were both honoured as Older Persons Month Ambassadors for Cayman Brac in 2021.

Showing photographs and books documenting local life during the interview, Walton said he wanted to highlight in his writings and memoirs, people whose contributions he believes might otherwise be forgotten. “Most of the old people who hold stories of our history, they’re no longer there,” he said.

Asked what advice he would offer others seeking a fulfilling life, Walton replied, “You don’t have to be rich. You don’t have to have a lot of money, but you have to have a goal in life, and you have to be able to stay focused on that goal,” he said. “If you want something, God will open up the way.”